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Sumit Hakhoo
Tribune News Service
Jammu, November 13
Commuting in Jammu is turning into a nightmare. With nearly four lakh vehicles on roads and influx of additional 30,000 vehicles due to the Durbar Move, the situation has reached a ‘saturation point’ with the administration struggling to manage the affairs.
People are daily facing chaos while reaching their offices and homes as they get caught up in snarls for hours. Continued neglect by successive governments to build flyovers and new arterial roads has led to a terrifying scenario in the city, which is spread over 115 sq km and inhabited by 7 lakh people.
A senior administrative official in the transport department said four-laning of the Jammu-Akhnoor and Ring Roads has been projected as a game changer but when completed, it will not bring much respite because the core city areas like Janipur, New Plot, Amphalla, BC Road, Kachi Chawani, Parade, old Jammu city and Talab Tillo will not be covered under it.
Senior Superintendent of Police (Traffic), Jammu, Joginder Singh said more than 40,000 new vehicles were registered every year and used road space which had not undergone much change in decades.
“Around 500 traffic personnel are deployed in Jammu district this winter. We are trying our best to manage vehicles but it is a Herculean task, especially during winter months, when the state functions from here. Lack of road space and public infrastructure are major problems,” he said.
The much-hyped multicrore intelligent traffic management system installed to manage vehicular movement has turned out to be a white elephant due to smaller roads and higher per km concentration of vehicles.
Under the Vision-2020 of the state in the late 1990s, it had proposed construction of four flyovers in Jammu to ease the pressure on roads but there are only two functional flyovers at the moment. The proposals to build BC Road-Ambphalla and Jewel Chowk-Canal Road flyovers were dropped because the state refused to bear the cost of land compensation.
Economic Reconstruction Agency director Abdul Majid Shabnam said the Asian Development Bank was ready to fund flyover projects but there was no land to undertake such a construction. “The issue is of land. There is no space to create new roads or flyovers in the city,” he said.