Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s showpiece tech hub comes to a standstill during rush hour. For techies on the 10am to 6pm shift, travelling the last couple of kilometres to office is sometimes tougher than the toughest official assignment of the day. It took Metro 30 minutes to reach EM Bypass from College More on Friday evening, the delay at three intersections — College More, Wipro and Chingrihata — ranging from three to eight minutes. Here’s a run through the plethora of traffic problems plaguing Sector V.

Parking peril

Taxis and cars are parked everywhere, coming in the way of smooth flow of traffic. Buses, too, show scant regard for rules, stopping wherever they like to pick up passengers, holding up traffic behind them. The fearlessness of those flouting rules could have something to do with the fact that police kiosks like the one near SDF Building are never manned.

“The sheer volume of vehicles slows down traffic in Sector V but if people follow rules, the situation could be much better. Traffic management should improve, too. The lights should stay red for shorter intervals,” said Ritesh Sadhu, whose office is in Technopolis building.

Rule of rickshaws

According to senior officials at the traffic police kiosk near Wipro, rickshaws, which claim and get right of way across the township, slow down traffic in Sector V.

“There is an incline where the road from Karunamoyee meets the Wipro intersection, which rickshaws find difficult to negotiate. There is a bottleneck there in any case, because of a narrow bridge over the canal. These two factors slow down traffic movement at this intersection,” an officer said.

The Metro car had to wait eight minutes there for the signal to turn green.

Autorickshaws are a menace, too. “Eighty per cent of the traffic violation cases are against autorickshaws. Most of them aren’t even registered. But political pressure comes in the way of taking action against them,” the officer said.

Pedestrian, who?

Sector V witnesses heavy pedestrian traffic, too, but there are no sidewalks for those on foot. People are forced to walk on the roads, which are, in any case, too narrow for the estimated 7,500 cars that ply daily. The car count goes up to 600 during rush hour (9am to 11am and 6pm to 8pm) .

The traffic light for pedestrians at College More turns green for only three seconds at two-minute intervals, which isn’t enough to even reach the divider.

Deadly divider

A road divider overlooking the intersection near SDF Building has been constructed with a technical fault that forces vehicles travelling in opposite directions to ply on the same lane for about 50 metres. A stand for autorickshaws plying between Sector V and Chingrihata adds to the chaos.

Official version

“Two of the six parking lots identified by us are already operational. We are trying to set up the rest at the earliest. We are also weighing the option of making some roads one-way during peak hour,” said S.A. Ahmed, the chairman of the Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority.

He said traffic congestion at the Wipro intersection would ease within a year, when a bridge connecting EM Bypass with Rajarhat is expected to be ready for traffic.