Police, expressway concessionaire lack gear to respond to crisis

GURGAON: It seems neither the traffic police nor the private concessionaire managing the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway is equipped to swiftly handle an emergency situation. It took them nearly five hours to clear the road after a heavy container turned turtle on the main carriageway on Wednesday.
The traffic police put the entire blame of Wednesday's incident on the private agency DSC Ltd for not removing the container quickly from the spot.The former only has one recovery vehicle with the department to remove overturned or broken down vehicles. The container had blocked the road leading to long pile-ups of vehicles on the surrounding roads for many hours.
As far as the private agency is concerned, it has four recovery vehicles besides patrolling vans, to keep a tab on smooth movement on the expressway. A spokesperson said the patrolling team had come to know about the container around 3am on Wednesday and alerted the office. Subsequently, a crane was sent to the spot for removing it.
However, the container was too heavy to be lifted by one crane. Otherwise, in such a case, it does not take much time in removing obstacles from the expressway in normal circumstances, the spokesperson added.
The incident has exposed the unpreparedness of the police and the private agency to deal with such a "once in a while" situation. The private agency confirmed that it did not have a huge crane to remove containers, even though the expressway is used by hundreds of containers on daily basis. Also, the patrolling vehicle failed to gauge how many cranes were required.
While agreeing that more cranes should be available with the traffic police, DCP (traffic) Bharti Arora said, "As far as the expressway is concerned, it is DSC Ltd's complete responsibility." Arora added that in case it is required, the traffic police gets help from MCG and HUDA.
Amidst this blame game, it is the commuters who suffer the most. The accident exposed poor traffic management in a very evident way. Firstly, the whole traffic force was busy clearing the container and there was %nobody managing the traffic on the other side of the highway. The chaos could have easily led to a serious traffic hazard.
Secondly, cordoning off the incident zone was done %in the most haphazard way, said Shikant Mishra, a commuter.