LAHORE: Massive traffic jams brought the provincial capital to a screeching halt on Tuesday, as major roads were blocked for the Pakistan Super League (PSL) semi-final at the Qaddafi Stadium, and mock exercises by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), Punjab Police and Rangers.
The commuters waited it out in long queues as major sections of the city were cordoned off including most of the Ferozepur Road, where the entrance to the Qaddafi Stadium is situated.
The traffic was diverted away from the Kalma Chowk Flyover on the Ferozepur Road by traffic wardens, towards the residential area of Garden Town through Model Town, effectively blocking all the main entrances to the Gulberg and Mall Road area.
The diverted traffic went through Model Town and Garden Town, causing great strife to the residents of the otherwise posh residential areas, and was then let on to the Canal Road through the Punjab University Campus Pull.
However, traffic heading towards Gulberg remained bumper to bumper even after being diverted onto the canal from the Campus Pull, because many commuters wished to park at the Punjab University parking which was a designated parking area for the match. This caused the creation of four alternatively facing lanes on an otherwise single-lane road.
The traffic heading to and from Kasur via Ferozepur Road, the city’s primary artery, also remained blocked.
Commuters seemed unimpressed with the performance of the traffic police, and especially because there were many wardens who had been called from other cities such as Multan to fulfil the higher demand of wardens in the city. These wardens, however, were unhelpful as they themselves did not know anything about the city’s roads or alternative routes.
It is worth mentioning that the traffic police have now had ample opportunities to perfect their traffic plans for when a cricket match is about to take place, having done the same duty on five occasions in the recent past, they have yet to improve on the plans they first drafted during last year’s PSL final in the city. How they ever plan to deal with longer cricket series is a question they seem totally unprepared to answer.
The chief traffic officer (CTO) Rai Ijaz, however, remained elusive regarding the continued use of last year’s plans. He did go on to say that 2,000 traffic wardens had been deputed to ensure a smooth flow of traffic in the city for the PSL matches. He further said that he himself was monitoring the traffic situation and seven superintendent police (SPs), 22 deputy superintendent police (DSPs), and 81 inspectors were supervising the traffic.
He held that wherever the citizens faced difficulties, he brought his teams in action and restored the traffic flow, adding that main roads in the city like Mall Road, Jail Road, MM Alam Road and Canal Road were open for every kind of traffic as usual.
Rai Ijaz further said that a control room, a monitoring room and four traffic awareness booths had been set by the city traffic police to ensure the flow of traffic.
At the same time, the mood amongst citizens remained one of anger. One citizen, Muhammad Aslam, complained that he had been caught in the traffic for at least two hours trying to go to Model Town from Mall Road, but the Kalma Chowk Flyover had been shut down, causing an hours-long pile up near Barkat Market in Garden Town.
Other commuters agreed that while the PSL was a positive step for the country, the tickets for the games were too expensive and only the well-off could go watch the matches, while the poor were left to suffer the collateral.
Additional reporting by Abdullah Niazi