VIP route, Auto Expo jams city on Monday

NEW DELHI: It was a manic Monday like no other. With traffic crawling at a snail''s pace, those behind the wheel were left with nothing to do but swear, sweat and honk in despair.
It took commuters more than half-an-hour to travel from India Gate C-hexagon to ITO via Tilak Marg, a distance of merely 2 km, late in the afternoon. The scene was the same at Rajghat at the time.Mathura Road was jam-packed beyond Appu Ghar.
Vehicles headed from east towards ITO had to halt at ITO bridge as IP Marg was choc-a-bloc. Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg also had vehicles queued up like in the peak hours.
The morning and evening hours were "sheer madness" as most road users described. Anshumani, a lawyer, spent one-and-a-half hours "travelling from the Delhi Zoo intersection on Mathura Road to Purana Quila Road in an auto."
She managed to reach her central Delhi home only after 7.30 pm.
Vinod Tripathi, a resident of IP Extension, had a harrowing time both in the morning and evening.
"I took over an hour and 20 minutes to travel from Nizamuddin Bridge to Bhagwan Das Road in the morning. On my way back, I had to spend 45 minutes trying to reach Bhairon Road from Purana Quila Road," he said.
Chetan Mehan, a resident of Noida, said, "I was coming via Mandi House and was headed towards Bhairon Road. I have never taken so long to cover that distance," he said.
He spent nearly two hours trying to get past Bhairon Road in the evening. "I don''t understand why, but for the past few days the traffic situation has been extremely bad," he said.
Traffic policemen were seen regulating traffic at all junctions on Mathura Road manually, in the evening.
While traffic officials could accurately attribute the rush on Mathura Road to the ongoing Auto Expo, with Monday being the last day for public entry, they had no concrete reason for the the collective situation on the roads.
"It''s the first day of the week and traffic is usually heavy on a Monday after the weekend lull," said joint commissioner of police (traffic) Qamar Ahmed.