MUMBAI: The five-hour long power outage in Mumbai on Monday crippled road traffic movement as traffic signals went blank as did the electronic surveillance cameras.
The Mumbai Traffic Police had to fan out its men to every junction to manually direct traffic and to avoid collisions. There are around 650 traffic signals in the city of which 90% went blank, officials said.
Mumbai power cut live updates
The Mumbai Traffic Police have a CCTV monitoring room at their headquarters in Worli where live feed from important junctions is monitored on a big screen. Whenever traffic congestion is noticed at any location on screen, the team calls up the concerned traffic chowky and sends helps. On Monday, this screen too went blank so there was no way for personnel to know where congestion was building up. They had to communicate and take updates over phone.
Power supply in some parts of Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai restored after massive outage
Power supply in some parts of Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai restored after massive outage
“South-bound traffic is anyway extremely heavy on Monday morning. The blank signals made it even tougher. We instructed every personnel from all our chowkies to go on the streets and direct traffic manually between 10am and 1pm,” said a senior officer. Among the worst hit stretches were BA Road, Western Express Highway, Sion Trombay Road, Worli-Girgaum Chowpatty stretch and Nana Chowk. “Nana Chowk has already been hit since traffic was diverted here after the landslide at Kemp’s Corner,” said the officer.
