No end in sight to traffic mess

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, January 1

Every passing year, the problem of vehicular traffic is getting grave. There are a number of issues such as number of vehicles are increasing, lack of parking zones, several encroachments, absence of public transportation, thousands of non-registered autos and lack of new infrastructure. But despite such issues, neither the Municipal Corporation, nor the administration is bothered to come up with any solution.

Going from Maqsudan Chowk to BMC Chowk seems like a difficult task for commuters.

Years have been passed, but the traffic issue has not got resolved yet. On the New Year, The Tribune looked at various factors contributing to woes of the commuters.

No parking zone developed in five years

As per information, besides a small parking zone near President hotel, not even a single parking zone has got developed in the city in past five years. Only plans and proposals are made but those never get implemented. The one near the hotel, which was developed into a parking zone, has hardly 150 m area. One can well imagine the number of vehicles it accommodates. According to traffic experts, the total number of parking zones in the city does not even cater to 25 per cent of the population. In the absence of proper parking place, vehicles can be seen on roads parked haphazardly, which often leads to traffic jams.

Non-registered auto-rickshaws

As per a rough estimate, a senior traffic police official said around 70,000 vehicles ply on roads every day. As per officials, around 15,000 auto-rickshaws ply on roads but only a few have been given permits. As per figures available till August 2018, permits have been given to only 549 vehicles. The officials said the auto-rickshaws were the most troublemaking vehicles which create traffic jams in the city.

Bus project still a dream

The Municipal Corporation has a lot of projects which have not started yet. One of them is a transportation project under the ‘Smart City’ mission in which 132 city buses were to be started for city residents. The project was supposed to help people commute in the city. But even after years of the announcement of the project, not even a single bus is visible. The project, if implemented, would have solved the problem of auto-rickshaws. As per information, 20 battery buses would come in its first phase but it seems to be a far-sighted hope.

School timings

Various meetings of the Deputy Commissioner, the Police Commissioner and the road safety committee have hardly provided any solution to these problems. Every morning, plans get passed but hardly get implemented. One such plan is the change of school timings. Schoolchildren get free from their respective schools almost at the same time, which causes chaos. All students disburse in the afternoon at the same time which creates traffic jams in various parts of the city. To solve the problem, it was decided in a meeting that the timings of schools will be changed, with a gap of 10-15 minutes, but it could not get implemented. Even traffic experts feel that change in the timing of schools would help in checking the traffic problem.

What officials say

ACP, Traffic, Jang Bahadur Sharma, said since Jalandhar has the largest number of hospitals in Asia, it caters to people across the country too. This also results in traffic chaos.

“We are going to make the area starting from Kapurthala Chowk towards Nakodar Chowk and BMC Chowk and then inside bazaars, as a no-entry zone and we will not allow heavy commercial vehicles to enter these areas from 8 am to 8 pm,” the ACP said, adding that strict action would be taken against auto-rickshaws and those found without papers would be impounded. He also added that the strength of traffic police personnel would also be increased.

Loss of man-hours

Valuable time of commuters is gets wasted as they spend hours getting stuck in traffic jams and it also causes stress among them.

Traffic expert and a core member of the district traffic committee, Surinder Saini, said he raised several issues in meetings with the Deputy Commissioner.

“Plans get passed in the meetings, but hardly get implemented,” he added.