The police later attributed the congestion to Google Maps not reflecting live traffic conditions, while commuters reported hours-long delays across routes.
As chaos resumed on Barapullah Phase-III on Monday after a brief respite over the long weekend, the Delhi Traffic Police initially blamed a “structural bottleneck” on the corridor for the massive jams, effectively pointing to the road design before deleting the post and issuing a fresh alert that attributed the congestion to Google Maps not reflecting live traffic conditions.
Traffic police initially blame structural bottleneck
The deleted post, made in response to a commuter’s complaint at 10.30am, said eight to nine lanes of traffic were converging into three lanes at a single point on the old Barapullah flyover.
The revised post, however, omitted the reference to the “structural bottleneck” and instead said commuters were continuing to use the corridor because Google Maps was showing normal traffic conditions.
Around 10.30am, as waves of commuters started complaining about the gridlock on the corridor on social media, the traffic police posted an alert highlighting the merging of multi-lane traffic into three lanes on the Ring Road and old Barapullah corridor. It also said congestion on the newly opened corridor was not yet reflected on Google Maps.
In response to one commuter’s post, the traffic police shared a message from the inspector of the Lajpat Nagar traffic circle, which said: “Main cause of traffic jam after opening of Barapullah Phase-III is structural bottleneck at Old Barapullah Flyover.”
The post then listed the lane widths of the different stretches. The old Barapullah flyover has three lanes, while the new Phase-III flyover from the Mayur Vihar side, the Sarai Kale Khan loop and the DND-side loop each have approximately three lanes.
“Thus, traffic of approx 8-9 lanes is converging into 3 lanes at a single point on Old Barapulah flyover,” the post said. It also noted that Google had not been updated with live traffic flow information and that traffic personnel were deployed at the merging points.
Police replace bottleneck explanation with Google Maps alert
About an hour later, the post was deleted and replaced with another traffic alert. The second post made no reference to the structural bottleneck or the eight-to-three lane merger.
“Cause: Congestion on Barapulla Phase-III is not being reflected on Google Maps, due to which commuters are continuing to take this route. This has resulted in heavy traffic volume and a bottleneck at Barapulla Junction, causing congestion to extend for a considerable distance,” the revised alert said.
The traffic police said traffic towards Barapullah and Ring Road was heavy and slow and advised commuters to avoid the affected stretch. Traffic from Phase-III was being diverted towards NH-24/DND, it said.
Traffic police say first post was deleted to verify facts
Asked why the first post was deleted, joint commissioner of police (traffic) Sanjay Tyagi said it was done “just to verify the facts.”
He said an aerial survey on October 1 had already identified the abrupt merger of traffic from the new flyover with the existing Barapullah corridor near Sundial as a bottleneck. “Following our aerial survey on October 1, we had already pointed out that the abrupt merger of traffic of the new flyover with the existing Barapullah corridor near the Sundial is leading to the formation of a bottleneck and that there is a significant mismatch in lane capacity at the merging point, with multiple streams of traffic converging towards the existing Barapullah flyover, which has competitively limited lane capacity,” Tyagi said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of motorists were again caught in massive jams on Monday morning on the newly opened corridor, as well as the Ring Road, Delhi-Noida Link Road and DND corridor. Despite the deployment of traffic personnel, the congestion continued for hours.
Commuters reported near-standstill traffic on the flyway, with jams spilling onto the Noida-Delhi Link Road and other alternate routes. Traffic also moved slowly on the Ring Road between Ashram and Sarai Kale Khan, causing bottlenecks to cascade into adjoining routes.