Traffic gridlock has remained aftermath of urban growth and expansion across the globe. Gridlock arises from the urge to migrate to diverse destinations simultaneously given the place of roads as a link between homes, work and leisure places. This paper was thus motivated by the zeal to evaluate and find the nature, magnitude and sizes of the costs associated with gridlock and proffer solutions. To this end, the study chooses the entire metropolis of Onitsha which has now sprawled into sub-urban areas like Nkwelleezunaka, Nsugbe, Ogidi and Ogbunike, etc. and is geopolitically housing six local government areas-Onitsha North and South, Ogbaru, Idemmili North and South and Oyi. The System theory was adopted as the theoretical framework of the study. Being qualitative, it adopted the questionnaire as an instrument of data collection while using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 22 for analysis. Using the stratified random sampling technique 120 respondents were selected for the study. Their analyses indicate that 88% of the road users in the study area have experienced gridlock with 81% agreeing that it occurs frequently and 85% agreeing that it lasts for more than four hours which is about half of the daily work hours in the economy. On the other hand, it was also found that gridlocks positively affect the revenue of 83% of traffic hawkers in the metropolis. The study thus recommends that concerted efforts must be made at employing the water bodies within and around Onitsha to serve as an alternative

Keywords : Gridlock, Onitsha metropolis, Urbanization, Road transportation, Traffic.