Mir Iqbal
SRINAGAR, Feb 14: Despite enormous increase of public vehicles in the State in last seven years, the road width has remained almost unchanged, pointing to the failure of successive Governments in traffic planning.
According to the official figures of Traffic Department, the number of registered vehicles in J&K was 6, 68,445 in 2008, in 2009, it jumped up to 7, 37,581 vehicles.
In the three years from 2010 to 2012, the traffic percentage increased by over 10 percent and the number of vehicles that plied on the roads were 9,16,898 in the State.
Officials at the Regional Transport Office (RTO) here said that about 5,000 new private vehicles are added to the roads in Kashmir every month and the State has 13 lakh vehicles with 6 lakh in the Valley alone.
Though the road length may have increased, yet the width has remained unchanged over the years.
“Least road widening has been done over the years while number of vehicles has increased to 13 lakh from 6,68, 445 in 2008. While as less than 10 percent road widening has been done during this period of time,” a senior official of Traffic Department said.
The mounting traffic and unchanged roads have led to increase in road accidents.
“The percentage of deaths in road accidents in the Valley is 66 percent as compared to the 37 percent at the national level,” the official said.
Traffic date reveals that in 2013 around 2256 road mishaps took place, killing 353 and injuring 3033 people.
“Since 2011, up to December 2014, 3960 people have been killed across the State and more than 30,000 people have been injured in over 20,000 road accidents,” the data says.
It says that during 2011-2012, about 50509 licenses were issued in Kashmir while in 2012-13 its number was 45,913. In 2014-15 so far around 23000 driving licenses have been issued.
The traffic officials blamed the Roads and Buildings Department for failing to improve and widen the roads.
A senior traffic official said traffic jams were primarily a result of failure in planning by other departments.
“The authorities have to take the decision as no major recruitment drive has been conducted in the past decade. We are not able to cater the traffic movement due to inadequate number of traffic personnel,” an official said.
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