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Islamabad Expressway connects a quarter million people living in Zone V, which includes housing societies like PWD, Bahria Town, Police Foundation, Korang Town, Soan Gardens, Naval Anchorage, DHA-II and many more, with their schools, offices, and businesses in Islamabad. 
Due to rapidly increasing traffic congestion, Islamabad Expressway was set to be made signal-free from Zero Point to Rawat, while also expanding the existing 2 lanes to 5 on each side in the last stretch of the highway. Work began in 2015.
Construction on an already extremely busy highway prone to severe traffic jams only meant more and more congestion. But commuters were hopeful of getting some relief eventually and held their breaths.
The first phase of the project included upgrading the highway from Zero Point to Faizabad, which took well over a year and a half, causing severe traffic jams on a daily basis. It is worth noting that heavy traffic uses the same highway as there is no bypass road for them.
The second phase included the main stretch from Faizabad to Koral Chowk (formerly also Airport Chowk). There were traffic signals in this patch at Sohan, Khanna Pul and Koral Chowk which had to be removed and completely new interchanges were to be built at Sohan and Koral Chowk.
The existing interchange at Khanna was to be torn down and built again. Koral Interchange opened for traffic in March 2017 while Sohan Interchange was opened in Jan 2018. The one at Khanna however, has seen the worst progress so far, and was opened on 23rd March 2019.
The worst part, however, is yet to be heard. The stretch of highway mentioned before already consisted of 5 lanes, and was never really a problem for daily commuters. The patch from Koral Chowk to Rawat is a two-lane road which connects commuters to a myriad of housing societies.
This creates a horrendous bottleneck, and is not only used by the hundreds of thousands of residents living in those housing societies, but also by a multitude of trucks and other heavy traffic that needs to access the GT Road. You can see the bottleneck in the attached picture.
This is a DAILY affair for people living in Zone-V, and there seems to be no end to it. All over Pakistan, there are bypasses for heavy traffic in order to accommodate the residents of those localities, and heavy traffic cannot enter cities until after 11 PM.
But unfortunately, for residents of Zone-V, there seems to be NO relief and the concerned authorities have turned a blind eye to this horrible injustice. Not only does this increase commute times by 2-3 times, it also prevents ambulances from reaching patients/hospitals.
Moreover, there is no check and balance on the fitness of the heavy traffic that occupies this highway. Trucks break down on almost a DAILY BASIS which makes it even worse, and forces the traffic of FIVE lanes into just ONE!
On the off chance that no trucks break down, they occupy ALL lanes, even the hard shoulder and keep moving at a snail's pace, while residents of the area, who have actually spent millions to buy houses/land over there are stuck behind them at the mercy of unruly truck drivers.
In result of a complaint lodged on the Citizen Portal regarding the entire issue, the administration took notice and @dcislamabad announced that no heavy traffic would be allowed to enter the highway from 7-9 AM and 5-7 PM.
However, the traffic management was extremely poor at first, and the heavy traffic that would enter the highway at 4:59 PM, for example, would be allowed onto it and would still travel on it despite the ban.
As of now, heavy traffic passes through the highway at whatever time pleases them, in BLATANT disregard of their time regulation. @ITP_Police has absolutely failed in obeying the orders and managing the traffic in peak hours.
These are a few of the scenes that residents of Zone-V get to see on a DAILY basis.
