Trust the traffic police to cough up a laugh or two

This is hilarious. It looks like the traffic police chickened out on having two-way traffic on the Double Road ramp of the Richmond Circle flyover, at the last minute. The papers this morning say it will be two-way but what I encountered was something entirely different. I was heading down Richmond Road towards Double Road and having memorized the routes from the morning's paper, ignored the makeshift sign and ascended the Richmond Road ramp hoping to descend on Double Road, almost surely expecting a jam. But what I got was entirely unexpected. I had stop at a traffic signal on the flyover!!! And when I could move I could get off only on the Mission Road ramp!! Basically the traffic police made an X of the flyover. Ascend the Double Road ramp, wait at the signal on the flyover and descend on the Residency Road ramp. Ascend the Richmond Road ramp, wait at the signal and descend on the Mission Road ramp. All the ramps are one-way.

The earlier plan was to let heavy vehicles flow beneath the flyover and make the Double Road ramp two-way for light vehicles. While that move was brought into question by several people, what has finally emerged is worse!!! The bulk of the traffic flowing out of the central business district (Residency Road and Richmond Road) flows towards Double Road. Roughly the distribution is 50% - Double Road, 35% - Raja Ram Mohan Roy Road and 15% - Mission Road. What the traffic police have now done, in the new arrangement, is to make that entire 50% (flowing entirely on Richmond Road now, thanks to the one-way) squeeze throw a narrow 20-ft wide lane next to the flyover and go towards Double Road while the flyover is left to the miniscule volume of traffic heading towards Mission Road. Trust the traffic police to bungle like this.