Umpteen U-turns, gridlocks galore: Hyderabad commuters caught in stop-and-go traffic

While peak hour used to be a time for traffic congestion, now, slow movement of vehicles throughout the day has become the norm.

More red than orange or green. That’s been the story of traffic movement in the city over the past few weeks for commuters using the east-west corridor or the southwest-northwest corridor. While commuters are blaming a series of complicated and long U-turns, police officials maintain traffic movement is smooth. While peak hour used to be a time for traffic congestion, now, slow movement of vehicles throughout the day has become the norm.

Earlier, people could take a right turn under the Biodiversity flyover on the Old Bombay Highway while proceeding from Shaikpet. Now, they have to go further ahead take a U-turn and come back. There is no right turn at the junction near IKEA while travelling from Kondapur, and motorists have to go ahead and take the U-turn to go towards Biodiversity Junction. Similar restrictions in traffic movement have been created near the Secretariat, Kondapur, and other locations in the city.  Some of the traffic restrictions are due to pipline or flyover works. 

“U-turns have been created so that there are no signals and traffic moves smoothly. But if the number of vehicles keeps increasing, traffic movement will slow down. And it has slowed down,” said a traffic police official in Panjagutta. “Some of the slowdown in traffic is when buses take the U-turn. By the time one bus moves, the vehicle pile-up increases,” added the official. VIP movement, including that of the President and Chief Minister, have further acerbated the woes for motorists.

Commuters have taken to social media to highlight their plight and the quixotic nature of traffic movement. “Getting from Indu Fortune Fields Gardenia to Vasantha City (and onwards to Kondapur) legally looks like this now. Guess what route do commuters actually end up taking?” wrote Ashish Chowdhury sharing a map of the  location near the place. “Then there are those who cut through road median gaps to avoid the U-turn further up, and hit the RUB faster. Both options cause mad inconvenience to oncoming traffic + endanger lives. A fair distance to ride wrong way in a sharp, unlit, narrow curve,” he wrote.

According to State government data, Telangana has a total road density of 97.49 km for 100 sq km and Hyderabad has the highest with a road density of 1332.7 km per 100 sq km among districts. Last year, the State had 1,51,13,129 registered motorised vehicles. As thousands of vehicles are added every week, traffic congestion is a given. Nearly 73% of the total vehicles in the State are motorcycles while cars constitute 13.6% (19,45,307) as of November 2022.