Raining problems for flyers outside and inside city airport
Times of India | 4 August 2024
Kolkata: Flyers were hit by a double whammy on Saturday, first because of waterlogging on VIP Road and Jessore Road and then by sporadic snags in the DigiYatra check-in system that delayed passenger entry into the terminal.
Waist-deep water in places along a 1 sq-km stretch of Haldiram’s on VIP Road and Chinar Park on the New Town’s main arterial road brought traffic movement to a crawl on Saturday.Similar was the situation along a 4-km stretch of Jessore Road.
Waterlogging, coupled with poor conditions of VIP Road, led to long snarls in the city-bound as well as airport-bound flanks. Airport officials said while many passengers reported closer to the final boarding call, there were no major no-shows or disruption of flight movement.
Passengers complained it took them anything between 30 minutes and 45 minutes to cross a 4-km stretch between Chinar Park and airport as vehicles crawled along the inundated VIP Road. Several vehicles broke down while wading through water.
“Massive waterlogging near the airport led to complete chaos. The roads are in a disastrous state. I was stuck in the traffic for such a long time that I feared I would miss the flight,” said Sneha Dutta, who took a flight to Mumbai.
The trouble at the airport continued with passengers complaining about DigiYatra gates, especially 1A/1B, not functioning on Saturday morning, forcing passengers to queue up for manual entry. Airport officials, however, said it was a temporary glitch that had occurred because of excessive rain and was sorted out in quick time.
Waterlogging in Chinar Park and on the service road stretch at Haldiram More has been a long-standing problem. Although the authorities had managed to keep waterlogging in check here last year, the stretch is getting inundated once again this year. At 1.50pm, the traffic snarl tail on the airport-bound flank of VIP Road reached Dum Dum Park, 6 kms from the airport. The chaos on VIP Road even slowed down traffic movement at Ultadanga and Kankurgachhi.
“There was knee- to waist-deep water at Haldirams crossing and near Chinar Park. We have managed to somehow keep the traffic moving but we admit that the movement had been extremely slow,” said a senior officer of Bidhannagar traffic police.
PWD officials said they were operating pumps at several points to flush out water as much as possible. “The Bagjola canal was overflowing as it was failing to drain out the water even with the help of the drainage pumping station opposite City Centre II mall,” said an official.
Along the other access road to the airport through Dum Dum, traffic movement had been severely affected on a 4-km airport-bound stretch from Airport gate 1 to Dum Dum Cantonment metro station. Locals alleged that choked sewers, saturated outlets and poor pumping arrangements have combined to turn the area, comprising wards 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 in the Dum Dum Municipality, into a basin. Harinder Singh, the chairman of Dum Dum Municipality, admitted to the waterlogging problem and blamed the poor condition of the road maintained by PWD for people’s woes.