THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) could not have selected a better day to organise its march against rising prices. On Thursday, an already choked Palayam-Statue area (thanks to the mass contact programme of the Chief Minister) suffered a stroke and paralysed the rest of the city, throwing traffic out of gear for nearly two hours.The traffic police had put in place certain traffic regulations owing to the BMS march. Vehicles were re-routed from Palayam through bylanes, which only helped to worsen the situation. The traffic came to a halt for nearly half an hour at Vanchiyoor, specially on the stretch in front of the Kerala Administrative Tribunal to the District Court, where an ongoing road work of the Kerala Road Fund Board has been creating utter confusion. It was the samewith bylanes at Pulimoodu, General Hospital junction and the nearby areas. According to traffic officials, there was a flow of people from the suburbs to the city to attend the CM's mass contact programme at Chandrasekharan Nair Stadium, which created a congestion on the MG Road for quite some time. The flow of elected representatives to the venue also added to the crowd. The practice of switching off the traffic signal lights in times of traffic congestion has been adding to the chaos, which was repeated on Thursday too.Commuters Face 'Hell' For the commuters from Peyad to the city, Thursday was nothing less than pure hell. So it was for those travelling all the way from the city to the suburbs on the same route. Serpentine queues of vehicles snarled all the way from Valiyavila, headlights beginning where bumpers ended. Angry commuters, who had to spend a good part of their day caught in blocks, were seen yelling at each other. Horns screeched and it was a battle of nerves on the road.The main bottleneck of the route is the great-grandmother of a bridge at Kundamonkadavu, the only one to get across the river to the other side of the city. It is so very close to disintegration that it allows vehicular traffic only in one direction. No amount of demands by residents on either side of the bridge has succeeded in opening the eyes of the authorities. On days of heavy showers, they live on a prayer. The Kerala Vyapari Vyavasayi Ekopana Samithi held a march and protest meet on Thursday against the unscientific nature of roads built on the route. They pointed out that the footpaths were so unscientific that they not only wereuseless for the pedestrians, but also took away valuable space on the road. Sure enough, a car that got its tyre punctured on the road held up traffic for almost half-an- hour, worsening the crisis.
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