Six-hour nightmare: BKC commuter ditches bike amid Chembur–Vashi gridlock

Traffic between Mankhurd and Vashi on Wednesday. Pic/X/@mid_day

Getting out of Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) is a painstaking ordeal on any given day, but Wednesday night descended into chaos. As I set off on my motorcycle for Kamothe around 10 pm, the scale of the gridlock between Chembur and the Vashi toll naka became clear.

A crane collapse on the bridge had turned the arterial road into a graveyard of stationary vehicles, with no on-ground communication from authorities for hours.

Fortunately, a timely call from a colleague saved me from spending the night on the highway. Realising the bridge was a dead zone, I made a split-second decision, left my motorcycle at Tilak Nagar and took a local train instead.

The experience was a stark reminder of how thin the line is between a routine commute and a six-hour nightmare on the city's overworked infrastructure.