Traffic mess on roads leads the population to frustration. Travel anywhere in any city or any town, you will the mess of traffic on roads frustrating travelers. Traffic movement on roads is increasing with each passing day in Kashmir and more so in Srinagar and Jammu the twin capital cities of Jammu & Kashmir state. The vehicular movement on roads is almost disproportionate to population, that is; traffic increases with the increase in population. You will find hard any place in the twin capitals cities Srinagar and Jammu and major towns across Kashmir where you won’t see people stuck in traffic jams. Most of us experience this while traveling in Srinagar ,the summer capital of state, and we blame traffic police for everything but it is not like that. They cannot be blamed for everything. People are also responsible for most of the difficulties that come in the way of the smooth movement of vehicular traffic. When we cannot correct ourselves, how can we expect all the necessary corrections in the smooth movement of vehicular traffic from traffic police?
While traveling from South Kashmir to Srinagar, I got stuck in traffic jams many a times at Pantha Chowk. Most of the people complain about the traffic congestion at this place. Not only common people but also once Anil Ambani has got stuck for half an hour at the same place, which forced him to cancel his trip to Pahalgam. While traveling in cities and towns one can easily find the common people violating traffic rules which is the main cause of traffic jams in the cities and town across Jammu & Kashmir .
Main reasons behind traffic jams
Street vendors: Most of the times the traffic occurs due to occupation of the foot paths and even main roads street by the vendors who keep pulling and pushing their carts on roadsides to evade action from the traffic cops. While vendors occupy some space on roads, the costumers approaching them for buying the commodities occupy half of the roads and henceforth those becoming barriers to traffic movement are not the traffic cops but the people themselves . Street vendors most of the times occupy the footpaths forcing pedestrians to move on roads.
Wrong Parking: Most of the people who go to cities or towns for shopping, travel in private vehicles and instead of parking their vehicles in parking zones ,they park their vehicles on the roadsides facing shops in busy markets. What happens is that most of them keep their vehicles on busy roadsides and here once again people themselves obstruct the vehicular movement. True it is that at some places we won’t find parking zones but the same does not give an open license to people to park their vehicles on roadsides in busy markets. The fault of the traffic regulation authorities is that they don’t arrange signboards near the crossings that lead to parking zones. So while it is our responsibility to park our vehicles in parking slots, the traffic regulating authorities have to ensure that strict action is taken against those who park their vehicles on roads in busy markets and not at nearby parking slots. On most of the highways army convoys make sure that their convoys pass without any hurdles as they adopt hard rules, and as such the traffic regulating authorities can also seek their cooperation to reduce the traffic mess on highways.
we blame traffic police for everything but it is not like that. They cannot be blamed for everything. People are also responsible for most of the difficulties that come in the way of the smooth movement of vehicular traffic.
We are living in 21st century and everything has changed now. Once population of the Srinagar city was some 2-3 lacks, and at that time, traffic was few hundred vehicles. Now it is almost 15 lack population and obviously the the number of both heavy and light vehicles has also increased to lacks as according to Motor Vehicles department of the Jammu & Kashmir government, 291415 vehicles have been registered up to march 2017. It has been also disclosed to Kashmir Horizon that in whole J&K the vehicles registered up to March 2017 are 1488190. To ensure smooth vehicular movement in cities and towns the government can’t say no to fast tracking the process of the road widening in both the capital cities and major towns of the state. One more reason for the obstructions in the traffic movement is the presence of flaws in the license issuing rules. It is easy to get license to drive a vehicle as you just need to have good influence on the license issuing authorities for getting a license and even people who do not qualify the mandatory driving tests get driving licenses easily. If authorities tend to show strictness in issuing license to those only who qualify the mandatory driving tests, the traffic mess can be reduced to a very larger extent.
As far as the achievements of traffic regulations are concerned, J&K Traffic Police department claims to have challaned 379521people during the current year till September end . These include 48469 court challans and 331052 compound challans. Interestingly the number of challans was 662930 in the year 2016 which included 64610 court challans and 598320 compound challans. These challans have executed at different units in J&K, Traffic City Srinagar, Traffic Rural Kashmir, Traffic City Jammu, Traffic Rural Jammu, and Traffic NHW (J&K Traffic Police Website).
Conclusion: – Once, the authorities tend to strictly deal with the traffic violators, the traffic regulation system would surely improve.
(Author is pursuing Diploma in Mechanical Engineering and is Executive Member of All Jammu and Kashmir Students Union(AJKSU). His views are personal)
