LAHORE, Sept 18: Switching off signals and stopping traffic at a busy crossing for nearly three minutes at a time have been detected as the main cause of traffic jams during peak hours in the past five days in the city.

The root cause has been detected after the higher authorities in the province took a serious notice of the traffic jams, especially minutes before Iftar which cause a great deal of inconvenience to the people, senior officials informed Dawn on Tuesday.

According to them, it had been gathered that the wardens had been switching off signals during the peak hours to manually control traffic on the directions of certain high-ups. But they had been stopping traffic from each side of a busy crossing like Mozang Chungi for a longer period of time without asking their colleagues manning the connecting intersections to follow the suit, allowing more vehicles to join the rush ahead.

This one mistake had been generating a chain reaction everywhere in the city, also forcing people to block streets and narrow lanes to find a way out.

“I don’t know whether it is deliberate or not, but the delay without synchronising the flow of vehicles at other crossings is creating a mess for the people and certainly making a bad impression about the wardens,” a senior officer said on the condition of anonymity.

He said the traffic police had been manually managing traffic during rush hours in the city in the past, but the exercise had always been conducted in an organised manner allowing only as many vehicles to move ahead as could pass the main roads without causing any trouble.

But the wardens were being made to do the practice without managing the load of traffic joining the stopped vehicles at a busy crossing.

Another official said traffic snarls were avoided a great deal on Tuesday after the authorities directed the wardens not to switch off the signals.

Those ordering the wardens to switch off the signals earlier too had been conveyed the government’s displeasure and the chances of a reshuffle in the traffic police could not be ruled out.