New Delhi: Traffic police have started their monsoon preparations early. They have handed over the corporations a list of points that are prone to waterlogging. Nothing seems to have changed on the ground, though, as a brief shower last week testified when large sections of roads across the city were submerged and traffic thrown out of gear.To avoid a repeat of that situation, police have asked civic bodies to ensure that they are well prepared when monsoon hits in earnest. Officers said variable message signs installed recently would be used to relay information about waterlogging. Police have also advised owners to check their vehicles for glitches before driving out in rain.Delhi's road network spreads over nearly 30,000 km, of which 1,000 km is susceptible to waterlogging during monsoon. There are more than 1 crore registered vehicles out on city roads and almost 1,000 are added daily. The roads are badly maintained and drainage is quite old, compounding the problems.Police officers said never-ending civic work and construction debris choked pavements and roads, which was a leading cause of waterlogging. "The maximum we can do is to identify the roads and even give solutions on paper. The rest is for road-owning agencies to implement," a senior police officer told TOI.Police said they had identified 168 points that were prone to waterlogging, of which 48 were found to be "severe". They claimed to have even offered engineering solutions for each of these stretches to the civic bodies.Traffic police officers said that while corporations had been desilting stormwater drains, they had done little to rectify surface designs of roads to reduce water accumulation. Traffic police records showed that 100 new waterlogging points had been created in the past one year due to construction work by Metro and PWD.Heavy traffic on these roads turned them into troughs, said an officer.The signs are ominous. By the time the corporations divide the new problem areas among themselves for corrective action, the season might be over. Police sources said even their important recommendations to change road geometries were pending with one agency or other. For example, they had recommended changing the slope of the road at Ashram Crossing after Metro construction work commenced. A survey was done, but work was never started.According to a report prepared by the traffic police, the worst-affected spots are broadly on stretches between Lajpat Nagar and Ambedkar Nagar, Mathura Road — between Ashram Chowk and Bhogal and Aurbindo Marg — and from Adhchini to Safdarjung Hospital.The second issue is that most snarls occur at the mouths of flyovers and underpasses, which lack drainage facilities. Even if there are drains here, they continue to be clogged. "The mouths of flyovers become a trough that hold water flowing down the slope," said a traffic police officer.

Stay updated with all the Delhi Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.