NEW DELHI:The city was in a mood to party — and it showed on its roads. For more than six hours, traffic was reduced to a crawl, as more than 2.5 lakh people gathered around India Gate and Rajpath to celebrate the advent of 2018. Traffic police said the volume was several times the regular load.
The roads, which were largely empty till noon, unexpectedly turned into a traffic nightmare by 3pm. People heading to the zoo or India Gate resulted in more than 4 lakh vehicles being stranded at Mathura Road — a distance that usually takes five minutes to cover. Traffic police had deployed 40 teams around C-Hexagon: they had a crowd of 90,000 to 1 lakh in mind during the peak hours.