LAHORE: On the first day of its opening, remodelling project of Allah Hoo Chowk in Johar Town proved to be a failure as traffic jam doubled in the area while many connecting arteries were clogged.
Around 13 roads join each other at Allah Hoo Chowk due to which it always faced traffic congestion, especially at peak hours. Most of traffic going towards Shaukat Khanam Hospital, Wapda Town and nearby localities used this road.
Some months back, engineering wing of Lahore Development Authority (LDA) decided to eliminate the roundabout and started the work. The road users faced traffic jams due to ongoing construction work for over two months.
On Monday, the LDA opened road for traffic and to the astonishment of the road users that there were no traffic signs to tell them where they have to turn. The main road of Johar Town was straightened while other connecting roads were diverted to other sides.
Now a road user coming from Jinnah Hospital through Board of Revenue Colony when reach Allah Ho Chowk will have to go towards Shauq Chowk to take a U-turn while the road users coming from Township side on three different roads will have to turn towards LDA Head office and will take a U-turn from in front of the Central Park before LDA head office. The LDA’s engineering wing while designing the project didn’t consider that when they give a U-turn to the traffic coming from Shaukat Khanam side, the three lane road will turn into a two lane road and this will result in a bottleneck. The LDA opened the road and to the surprise of the road users that there were no signs or written guiding for people coming towards this junction that where they have to go and take a U-turn.
The scribe also witnessed almost an hour long traffic jam at peak hour on the same road and found that the root cause of the traffic jam was two bottlenecks, one before Shauq Chowk and the other before Allah Ho Chowk. It was also witnessed that dozens of motorcyclists instead of going towards LDA’s Central Park to take a U-turn started crossing the road through the greenbelt and this also aggravated the traffic jams while several rickshaw drivers and car drivers were also seen coming one way. Following the clogged road, traffic coming from Akbar Chowk, Jinnah Hospital and other sides was also disturbed and long queues were also witnessed at Shauq Chowk on both sides of the traffic signal. The News repeatedly tried to contact LDA Project Director Iqrar Hussain but he didn’t attend the phone. Questions were sent to LDA’s official spokesperson who said he had forwarded them to the project director but no answer was received till filing of this report.