Traffic nightmare for Sankranthi commuters on Hyderabad-Vijayawada highway

HYDERABAD: The annual nightmare on the Hyderabad-Vijayawada Highway returned to haunt people heading to their native places for Sankranthi festival on Friday. Commuters using the highway that connects the two Telugu states were severely hit in the face of heavy and excruciatingly long traffic jams.

Vehicles were left stranded for a stretch of well over 10 kms on the highway as a result of unprecedented rush from Hyderabad towards Vijayawada. A similar scenario was witnessed near Ibrahimpatnam, located close to Vijayawada, where vehicles had to endure a four-km-long traffic jam.

Traffic congestion on the Hyderabad-Vijayawada highway before major Telugu festivals has been a common feature. And Sankranthi being the major festival in the two Telugu states, thousands of employees working in Hyderabad and their families prefer to travel to their native places in Andhra Pradesh.

The toll plazas along the highway unwittingly turn into bottlenecks for the free flow of vehicular movement. With vehicles needed to stop and proceed forward from these toll gates, the movement of vehicles is slowed down, resulting in heavy traffic jams stretching into a few kilometres at a few places. Traffic snarls were being witnessed at the Keesara toll plaza on the outskirts of Hyderabad and the Swarna toll plaza in Kanchikacharla mandal of NTR district near Vijayawada since Friday morning.

To mitigate the traffic congestion and ensure swift regulation of vehicular movement, additional fast track lanes were created at the Swarna toll plaza.