City 'going home' for Sankranti, clogs toll plazas, 60,000 vehicles on single day

HYDERABAD: With thousands of families driving home to spend the Sankranti festival with their relatives in their native villages, all the toll plazas exiting Hyderabad city, particularly on the Hyderabad-Vijayawada national highway turned chock-a-block with unending traffic.

Traffic is moving at a nail’s pace at Keesara toll plaza in Kanchikacherla mandal of NTR district in Andhra Pradesh. With the car owners trying to overtake others at the special counters created to ease the festive rush families with little children faced problems.

Read More: Sankranti rush hits vehicular traffic at Pantangi toll plaza in Nalgonda

The condition is no different at the toll plazas in the erstwhile Nalgonda district. Toll records showed that more than 60,000 vehicles big and small crossed these toll gates on Friday. The highway authorities opened 10 booths at the Pantangi Plaza and 14 at the Korlapahad Plaza to ease the rush. On the other hand, six toll booths were kept open at the Gudur toll gate on the Warangal highway.

Efforts are being made to clear the rush with the help of hand readers that clear the fast-tagged vehicles. Adding to the problem, the ongoing expansion and repair works at Batasingaram, Abdulpurmet, Kothagudem, and Choutuppaal on the Hyderabad-Vijayawada highway resulted in lengthy traffic snarls. As a result of this, traffic is accumulating at the toll plazas. Both the traffic, district police, NH authorities, and GMR are continuously monitoring the situation.