KARACHI: The breakdown of a trailer on a diversion of under-construction Motorway (Super­highway) near Ansari Bridge on late Saturday night caused an over 12-hour-long traffic jam on the highway resulting in immense inconvenience to road users who became stuck there till Sunday afternoon, officials and witnesses said.

The road users blamed the authorities for the snarl-up who they claimed were totally ill-equipped to timely remove the trailer to clear the way for the traffic.

The Motorway police claimed that ‘ill-discipline and impatience’ of drivers and road users caused the traffic jam as they came on the wrong side of the road blocking both tracks of the Superhighway.

Apparently exhausted and finding themselves unable to clear the way, the Motorway police on Sunday morning finally sought help of the Sindh police IG and the DG of Rangers, Sindh, who sent a local police team and the paramilitary force along with the traffic police who managed to clear the highway at around 2pm on Sunday, the officials added.

Motorway police SSP Karamullah Soomro told Dawn on Sunday that the trailer coming to Karachi from Hyderabad broke down on the diversion of the Motorway near Ansari Bridge.

The highway police tried to remove the trailer from the road with the help of heavy machinery, but in the meantime road users demonstrating ‘impatience’ drove their vehicles on the wrong side of the highway, the police officer added.

As a result the traffic coming from Hyderabad to Karachi was also blocked, which caused immense problems for the motorway police, the National Highway Authority and the Frontier Works Organisation, which were constructing the motorway.

Another Motorway police official, who wished not to be named, told Dawn that the trailer broke down at around 11.30pm on Saturday at Ansari Bridge.

Since the main highway was closed owing to the ongoing construction work, the breaking down of the trailer caused the traffic jam on the diversion.

The motorway police tried to remove the trailer to clear the way for traffic but mostly heavy bus drivers who appeared to be in ‘hurry’ plied their vehicles on wrong track. Since it was a weekend, the volume of the traffic was too high. Ultimately, the vehicles came ‘head to head’ on both tracks.

“The trailer was removed from the track after one and half hour struggle, but if the drivers had demonstrated some patience, the worst traffic jam could have been avoided,” opined the official.

The motorway police official admitted that they were ‘helpless’ before such mammoth traffic jam and in the Sunday morning, they approached the police and the paramilitary force authorities who sent the district Malir and the Karachi traffic police and the Rangers personnel who helped them clear the both tracks of the highway at around 2pm.

The official admitted that the highway police did not have required cranes or any machinery to meet such eventuality for removing the vehicles.

However, the Motorway police SSP said that their job was to ‘regulate traffic’ only and the provision of machinery was the job of the NHA and the FWO and others.

On Sunday night, the commuters again suffered a traffic jam on the highway at the same place of Ansari Bridge, said an official and witnesses.

The Motorway police official told Dawn that diversion track created by the FWO near Ansari Bridge significantly reduced the speed of the vehicles because of its uneven condition. As a result, the vehicles coming from behind also slowed down, triggering traffic jams.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2017