KARACHI, Sept 2: Karachiites who are already suffering traffic jams on a daily basis have started to lose their night’s sleep at the thought of further aggravation of the situation on Monday owing to the closure of the two major bridges on the busy thoroughfares.

One of the bridges is closed as it collapsed on Saturday afternoon and the other bridge was been closed by the government on Saturday evening to check its strength and safety.

The Shershah bridge, a part of the multi-billion-rupee Northern Bypass project, collapsed on Saturday afternoon. It had been specially built to serve thousands of heavy vehicles coming to the port and travelling back to upcountry.

The vehicles used to take the newly constructed bypass and vehicles used to ply between the port and Sohrab Goth on the Super Highway without passing through city roads. But now with the collapse of this bridge thousands of heavy vehicles would be diverted to other already overburdened city roads.

This bridge also served thousands of vehicles, most of them heavy vehicles, going to and coming from Hub Chowki and the coastal highway. All of these vehicles have also been diverted onto city roads.

The other bridge/flyover that has been closed to check its strength connects Rashid Minhas Road to Sharea Faisal and is known as the COD Flyover.

A large number of vehicles running between Gulistan-i-Jauher, Federal B Area, North Nazimabad, North Karachi and the city centre used to take Sharea Faisal, a slightly longer but with lesser traffic, route but with this bridge closed the traffic congestion would increase and traffic jams would be inevitable on the signal-free Sharea Faisal.

Traffic jams were already witnessed on Sunday, though a holiday with lesser traffic on roads, and motorists and commuters were fearing worse road conditions on Monday.