Manzoor Makhdoomi
Srinagar, June 3: Wrong priorities of Traffic Department, narrow roads and ever increasing number of vehicles has created chaotic traffic situation in Srinagar city with a population of 17 lakh.
“The Traffic Department is behaving like a revenue generating department. They have limited their work to just filing challans and collecting fines and pay little heed to improving quality of traffic services”, said a Traffic Department official on condition of anonymity. He said officials deployed at various spots have a predetermined quota of challans to file per day and their attention remains on just completing their quotas. He suggested apart from collecting fines Traffic Department should also concentrate on improving quality of traffic services so that common people heave a sigh of relief. It is pertinent that Traffic Department collected fines to the tune of Rs 11 lakh in April this year.
The roads that were built many decades ago were not widened to accommodate increasing vehicular traffic. According to official figures 50,000 new vehicles are added to the road traffic every year in Kashmir. The narrow roads and increased traffic is the main cause of traffic bottlenecks at several places in Srinagar city.
“One fourth of total space is allocated to roads, which is mandatory for a modern city but Srinagar city is a far cry from this figure”, a Traffic Department official said.
There is also a huge deficit of traffic signal men who control traffic on busiest spots of city’s roads. This deficiency can be gauged by the fact that one signal man deployed at a beat at Poloview has to spend about 12 hours on the beat to render his duty of controlling traffic.
“There is no shift system for people like me and I have to be on the beat from 6 am to 8 pm non-stop”, said a signal man wishing not to be named. According to sources there are less than 300 signalmen in entire Jammu and Kashmir, whereas the required number is in thousands.
About half a kilometre stretch of Residency road that traverses Srinagar city’s commercial hub, Lal Chowk, remains occupied with cars parked by shopkeepers and customers badly effecting smooth flow of traffic. Unable to cope with ever increasing traffic mess the Traffic Department has now permitted the parking on roads. A yellow line has been drawn on the Residency Road to demarcate car parking for customers.
“Shopkeepers are violating rules and park their own cars on the road which is meant for cars of customers only. This is why one lane of the road remains occupied by cars throughout the day”, said SSP Traffic Department, Haseeb-ur-Rehman. He said he has presented proposals to Government for developing multi-storeyed car parking spaces at several locations in the city.
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