Bypass Test For Cops As Post-cov Wedding Season Back With A Bang | Kolkata News

Kolkata: Cops are on their toes to keep EM Bypass moving this Tuesday and Thursday as thousands of wedding guests are likely to descend on the several big wedding-hall properties — consisting of banquet halls of top hotels and specific wedding venues — along the thoroughfare in the city’s first post-Covid wedding season.
A study carried out by the Beliaghata and the Tiljala traffic guards last week found 24 marriage halls — located within 5 km on EM Bypass between Panchannagram and Bengal Chemical Crossing (with some of them located inside Salt Lake) — is leading to over 6,000 cars ( average 250 cars per venue) being added to the Maa flyover-Hyatt stretch usual traffic load in the peak evening office hours. This is bringing the traffic under pressure, cops said.
The police are now devising all possible stop-gap measures for the rest of this wedding season after last Friday — when a few other local factors contributed to the slow movement of vehicles. On that day, vehicles took close to 45 minutes to reach from Nalban to Maa flyover in the evening before cops brought the situation under complete control after almost an hour.
Police said that most guests tend to reach the reception halls and banquets between 7.30pm and 8.30pm.
“With vehicles from across the city trying to reach these spots, the volume of traffic begins to rise post 6 pm. Most of the office crowd — particularly from Sector V and New Town — start to leave their offices around this time. With offices opening up, hundreds of pool cars and shuttle service buses hit this stretch around the same time now. Together, they put up a tough challenge,” explained an officer.
The wedding halls and banquets — both big and small — though say the bookings are yet to reach their “full potential.” According to a spokesperson of PC Chandra Garden which has a parking space for 475 odd vehicles, they have two bookings for Tuesday.
“The two banquets booked for Tuesday (out of the four they have) are actually the smaller ones. On February 25, another big wedding day, we have another two bookings. The numbers are better than past two years but it will take some more time before things normalize,” said the spokesperson.
Rahul Agarwal, owner of Adharv Banquet near Subhas Sarobar, that offers parking of around 150 cars, said that the business is just about picking up.
The cops said that they would study the vehicle pressure on the roads leading up to Bypass and take on spot decisions.
“We might switch to manual traffic and make slight changes to signal cycles,” said an officer.