CHENNAI: The Vice President’s convoy, Deepavali exodus and intermittent rain brought traffic to a grinding halt in the city on Monday. Daily commuters bore the brunt as they were forced to navigate through bumper-to-bumper traffic in the evening rain. Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu’s convoy, which left Raj Bhavan at 4 pm to Anna University, apparently started it all forcing motorists spend more time -- sometimes two-three times -- on the road than usual.
The Sardar Patel road that was on VP’s route could hardly recover when peak-hour traffic worsened the situation. Vice President’s next stop to Hotel Leela Palace brought traffic to a snail’s crawl at Adyar signal, Greenways road and Santhome. The slow moving traffic hit Anna Salai which was already reeling with Deepavali exodus, as people were leaving town for holidays. The effect of the convoy and rains which clogged traffic was felt as far away as Tambaram. “I could see a sea of still vehicles from the Tambaram flyover,” said Siddharth N, who took 25 minutes to navigate a five-minute stretch from Tambaram to Chromepet.
“The rain and the timing of the convoy hit the traffic hard,” said a senior traffic police official.
Despite having diverted the trucks to and from Chennai to Thiruvallur and Kancheepuram via the bypass, traffic officials were unable to ensure smooth movement in the city. “Around 3,000 traffic policemen were assigned special duty anticipating traffic build up and we managed to ensure flow in two hours,” said a senior official in the traffic department. “It is so irritating that we have to suffer whenever someone big comes to the city,” said Diwakar Aravind, a resident of Tambaram who was stuck in the rain on Velacherry main road.