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While lots of things are being done by the administration to make Srinagar city more beautiful aesthetically and more liveable, one aspect that gets the least attention is that of mess on almost all Srinagar roads. It is a nightmare to travel on Srinagar roads particularly during the peak hours in mornings and evenings. A distance of a few kilometres takes hours and people’s precious time is wasted as there is no effective and proper traffic management in place. Everyday, the traffic authorities are doing fresh experiments – blocking some entries and unblocking some, diverting and un-diverting traffic at different points and these frequent experiments are, instead of solving the problem, only adding to the existing ones. These are all short-term measures that the authorities take to manage the traffic and time and again these measures have failed to get the desires results. Long hours get wasted in traffic jamming and to the utter shock of the commuters, everyday there are some new road blocks and diversions. Same is true about the Srinagar bypass road.
Traffic jamming is a chronic problem that the Srinagar city has been face to face with. With new vehicles coming on the roads, the jamming has intensified from past two decades. The situation on the roads is getting worse with every passing. As the number of vehicles has increased manyfold and the roads remain the same, it is getting messier. Need is to have new roads to divert the traffic and deal with the rush on the existing roads. For instance, few years back, a foot bridge was constructed on Jhelum river near Convent School. Had this bridge been made for vehicular movement, it would have helped to reduce the maddening jamming on Abdullah bridge. However, no such thing was done.
Need is to have a scientific traffic management system in place. The concerned authorities should identify the trouble spots that result into traffic jams, and devise strategies to regularize the traffic. The authorities should consult experts of the field to help overcome the problem and go for innovative measures. Secondly, traffic police do not have the requisite man power available and that too results in traffic jams are several spots remain unmanned. The administration should focus on this issue too and try to increase the man power of traffic department.
That said, the general public too has to play its role to ensure that traffic on Srinagar roads runs smoothly and the time of commuters is not wasted. Parking vehicles randomly, overtaking unnecessarily, stopping in the middle of road to pick or drop the passengers, attending to phone calls while driving, these and other such issues too hamper the smooth flow of traffic. While authorities should take every step to find out the reasons behind traffic mess and come up with long-term solutions, the public in general too need to develop traffic sense and driver professionally and responsibly to help the proper traffic management.
