Thousands of festival-goers were trapped in a massive traffic snarl-up Tuesday evening as they tried to leave Phnom Penh after a day by at the Water Fetival.
Vehicle and motorbike traffic came to a complete halt for more than five hours in southern Phnom Penh around the Monivong Bridge traffic circle. The standstill extended north on Norodom and Monivong Boulevards, south toward Takhmau and east across the bridge toward Kien Svay district, Kandal province.
The deadlock occurred when cars, trucks and people on foot attempting to exit the south side of the city met traffic entering Phnom Penh from Takhmau and Kien Svay.
“We were under orders to stop cars coming into the city when it got dark,” one traffic policeman at the roundabout said Wednesday, explaining that the police had set up stop gates at the four exits to the roundabout.
“The cars were creeping along,” he said. The officer declined to give his name.
Local vendors said the traffic jam started in the early evening and went on past midnight.
“The congestion was very bad,” a newspaper vendor who called herself Miss Chay said Wednesday. “It stretched from Takhmau all the way into Phnom Penh.”
Phally, who runs a small gas stop by the Monivong Bridge, said she’d never seen so much traffic in 10 years of business.
“Some people left their motos here and walked home,” she said. “Nothing was moving.”
