Earlier this week, the Chief Secretary chaired a meeting to review the traffic arrangements in Srinagar.
Importantly and in a right direction, the highest civil officer stressed upon the officers to take all necessary measures to “smoothen” the flow of traffic in the city and all other areas with zero tolerance against offences like wrong parking and lane indiscipline.
There is also need to address traffic snarls around the Dal Lake area and the concerned need to take corrective measures at an earliest.
It is important to note that the volume of traffic is only increasing with each passing day. The number of vehicles clogging roads continues to be huge. Amid this, the problem of traffic jams simply refuses to go away despite some efforts to address it. The situation on the traffic front remains nightmarish at times. Most of the time, the roads witness serpentine queues of stranded vehicles and people are left wandering in their vehicles which is agonizing.
The popular market and tourist places having the highest footfall are badly affected in terms of choking roads.
The Chief Secretary rightly underlined that there should be no halting of buses at their will and these should stop only at designated locations. Also wrong parking has to be dealt with strictly. In the coming months, he said, people should not witness any traffic jams and all preparations have to be made in advance to plug any loopholes.
The traffic department needs to hold a stakeholders consultation and formulate SOPs to be complied with without need for coercive measures by all.
Under the Smart City Project, the authorities have installed closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and other devices in Srinagar. The cameras have begun sending live video and photo feeds of traffic violations to a command and control centre.
According to officials, ITMS cameras have been installed in about 60 intersections in Srinagar out of which 25 are fully ready to start generating e-challans. The technology one hopes will help check the traffic violations and help smoothen the overall traffic system.
There is also a need to check over-speeding by the drivers and ensure strict compliance to the fixed speed limits. The concerned officials need to conduct checking of vehicles in a regulated manner without causing disruption to the smooth traffic movement. There is need for using more and more modern tools and technology for manning the roads and ensuring smooth flow of traffic.