PATNA, Oct. 7 -- For the last one month, the capital city of Patna has not merely suffered from traffic jams. It has lived them. Day by day, the capital's arteries are getting so clogged that ordinary movement is now an act of endurance for the people. A BN College student on a bike was trapped near Gandhi Maidan for more than an hour on Monday. There was hardly any escape as all surrounding roads had turned into walls of metal and frustration. The same story repeats daily on Nehru Path, Budh Marg, Station Road, Exhibition Road, Nala Road, Kankar Bagh and Ashok Rajpath. Peak hours turn the city into a parking lot that still somehow moves -- at a snail's pace. This is no temporary inconvenience. It is the new normal in a city that once sold itself as 'smart'. Walk any major stretch after 10 am or 6 pm and the human cost becomes impossible to ignore. People leaving for work sit in stagnant cars with their air-conditioning struggling against the heat. Bikers weave in between vehicles only to find themselves stuck again. Ambulances with critical patients are not spared in the midst of traffic chaos. What should be a 20-minute journey often stretches to a ninety minute ordeal. The integrated command and control centre (ICCC), launched under the Smart City Mission and operational since August 2022, was supposed to change everything with the installation of hundreds of cameras, real-time monitoring, coordinated responses. Instead, a senior officer admits, a majority of those cameras on critical stretches are down. The agency responsible has been told to restore them 'at the earliest'. Meanwhile, people remain locked in congested lanes for hours, waiting for attention that rarely comes. Construction of metro rail network is a convenient alibi, and it is certainly a major factor. "Barricades, diversions and narrowed carriageways have carved the city into a maze of bottlenecks. But the deeper failures are older and more stubborn. Massive encroachments near market areas turn already narrow roads into choke points the moment shops open. Illegal parking is treated as an entitlement. And the city's reliance on autos and electric rickshaws-locally called Totos -- has become a daily sabotage," said Birendra Rai of Lohia Path. He said that reckless driving by autos, sudden stops and vehicles occupying every available inch of road space compound the chaos. "Unlike Delhi or Mumbai, Patna still lacks a reliable, high-capacity public transport system." At Budh Marg and Adalatganj roundabout, traffic jams have escalated over the last many months due to Totos parking their vehicles at the junction point of the Mithapur flyover to lift passengers along with buses also taking the flyover route to reach their destinations in eastern Patna. One traffic constable, deputed for regulating traffic, rued that the Totos and autorickshaws get into brawls when they are asked to move their vehicles. "I am manning the entire stretch from the GPO to ISKCON temple almost all days without much of resources to impound vehicles, which are parked on the road illegally in the day time. The auto rickshaw and Toto drivers have their unions and they get into fights , if they are asked to move their vehicles until they get full passengers as per occupancy. This is the reason why jams occur in this stretch so frequently," he said. Residents describe the experience in the language of exhaustion and quiet rage. "Every morning I leave an hour early just to reach the office on time," said Rakesh Kumar, a private employee, who travels daily from Kankar Bagh to Boring Road. "By the time I get home, I feel completely drained. Last week I missed an important meeting because I was stuck near Dak Bungalow for half an hour. My boss does not care about the jam. He only cares that I was late." Near Exhibition Road, shopkeeper Meena Devi watched the same jam cropping up outside her shop for the third consecutive day. The traffic SP,Patna Sagar Kumar Jha being on leave, the SP Traffic (in-charge) said he was not aware of the long term plans for addressing the traffic congestions at certain points and the SP, traffic would be able to give detailed information, once he joins. Patna divisional commissioner Rajesh Kumar confirmed that a meeting last month examined the crisis and proposed colour-coding of auto-rickshaws and Totos....