Calcutta, Oct. 9: The dam burst. Unable to control the flow of traffic during the evening rush hour, police dismantled the barricades they had put up on Monday to stop north-to-south movement along the arterial Chowringhee Road.

“The situation turned impossible,” said M.K. Singh, DC, traffic.

“The entire area was paralysed and almost all roads choked with one half of Chowringhee out of commission. To ease the situation, we temporarily removed the barricades and allowed private cars to pass through. We are still experimenting to see how things can be made to work to the advantage of the commuter.”

Buses and other heavy vehicles emerging out of Chittaranjan Avenue and S.N. Banerjee Road still had to use the narrow thoroughfare — New Road — to proceed south via Mayo Road or Dufferin Road.

New Road, which runs behind the Maidan Market, has remained virtually clogged for the last two days.

The situation turned chaotic in the area when work began on the Park Street flyover on Monday afternoon and the police abruptly put a stop to north-to-south traffic.

This evening, with crowds of puja shoppers adding to the chaos, the police had to requisition the services of boy scouts to control the situation. “We desperately needed help to check this surging humanity from spilling on to the roads when we had got things to move a little bit,” said Singh. “Tempers were running high all around and we didn’t want a mishap on our hands.”

The situation would not have come to this had a temporary road, as agreed in the contract, been built by construction firm Senbo along Chowringhee from the Lindsay Street intersection to the Jeevan Deep building.

Today, A.K. Pal, the vice-chairman of the Hooghly River Bridge Commissioners, which is overseeing the construction of the flyover, said the only reason the temporary road had not been constructed was “non-cooperation from the Metro Rail authorities”.

“On September 20, the chief secretary held a meeting and said that work on the flyover, which was already running late, had to be started immediately,” Pal said.

“We had made a commitment to the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, which has a substantial financial involvement in the project, that the flyover would be completed by November 2003. Since we had not started work when we should have, it was threatening to pull out. This would have jeopardised the entire project.”

Pal said there are some Metro Rail structures on the stretch where the temporary road is to be built. “We had repeatedly asked them to relocate the structures so that the road could be laid, but they have not cooperated,” Pal said. “Now they have said work will begin after the Pujas and only then can the road be constructed.”

The chief operations manager of Metro Rail, P.K. Chatterjee, replied to the charges, saying: “HRBC can say whatever it wants to. But I would like to check the facts before I make a comment.”