Scarcity of new roads continue to add woes of commuters

Vikas Sharma. Dated: 11/15/2018 10:45:42 AM

Vikas Sharma
Jammu, Nov 14
While the number of vehicles registered is increasing day by day but on the same time, the roads are not being constructed by the authorities as the result the commuters has to face many hardships to ply their vehicles.
As per the details available, over 40,000 vehicles registered in Jammu and Kashmir every year but the administration has not fool proof solution so that the commuters can get a smooth plying with their vehicles. Even the higher officials failed to manage traffic chaos and forced the people to face unending jams on the roads.
“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,” said Sahil Choudhary, a commuter.
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.
“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,” asserted a top official of the transport department.
The higher officials further admitted that with the addition of more than 40,000 new vehicles 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,” said a top traffic officer.
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.
Meanwhile, one of the higher government official over anonymity informed that the government was ready to construct new flyover projects but there was no land to undertake such a construction. Due to the scarcity of land, the projects to construct new roads as well as the flyovers were abandoned.

 

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