Commuters travelling along the busy Mananchira-Malaparamba corridor were left stranded for hours following severe traffic congestion at the Christian College Junction. Despite the recent expansion of the route into a four-lane road, unscientific traffic signal systems and sudden diversions continue to torment motorists entering Kozhikode city.

The latest crisis was triggered when a two-lane stretch on the Wayanad Road side was temporarily closed for culvert construction. With the key section blocked for over five hours, massive gridlocks built up, stretching all the way from Nadakkavu to the Christian College Junction.

A flawed traffic signal system
Adding to the chaos was the highly flawed signal timing at the junction. Currently, vehicles heading towards the city are allocated a mere 13 seconds of green light to cross. Once that window closes, commuters are forced to wait for 35 seconds. With half of the four-lane road closed, this 13-second window proved entirely inadequate, leading to a massive tailback of vehicles. As the bumper-to-bumper traffic grew worse, local police finally had to switch off the automated signal system entirely and manually direct the vehicles to ease the bottleneck.

Hours of frustration for commuters
The road closure, which began at 3 pm, affected the western side of the road starting from the English Church Manorama Junction up to the Christian College Junction. With vehicles unable to move forward or backward, frustrated commuters called for better coordination between public works department officials and traffic police before undertaking such major repair works on busy city corridors.