Abodh Sharma
Early Times Report
jammu, Mar 11: Vested interests and complete lack of foresight have pushed Jammu and Kashmir into a complete policy paralysis with regards to urban transport system and as a result, both the capital cities and several other upcoming towns are confronting vexed traffic jams and alarming increase in road fatality.
Geometric increase in vehicular population and a pathetically meager corresponding increase in road infrastructure, coupled with poor civic sense and flawed licensing system have brought cities of the State to the verge of traffic catastrophe and if a prospective and effective transport policy is not formulated and implemented soon, it may spell a doom for the people of the State.
"Complete absence of Government owned public transport system both in Jammu and Srinagar has monopolized local transport to private sector, which results in complete anarchy, corruption and lack of regulation" said a former officer of the Transport Department. "While many other cities of the country have revamped their urban public transport system by introducing luxury busses, air conditioned wagons and even metro trains which encourage people to travel by them rather than their own cars and bikes; in Jammu as well as Srinagar, privately owned mini buses are only medium of local transport" he added. "Vested interests have completely destroyed State Road Transport Corporation which till not very long ago operated its buses within the city" he added further.
Pertinently, the NC-Congress coalition Government had taken the maiden step to engage expert agencies to suggest comprehensive urban transport system for the twin capital cities of the State.
The exercise for preparing Comprehensive Mobility Plans for Jammu as well as Srinagar was initiated under City Mobility Plans in 2012 and RITES Ltd, a renowned consultancy organization in the field of surface transport, infrastructure and related technologies, was engaged for the purpose.
According to the sources, these Plans, focused on road widening, improvement in the mass public transport system through new standard and mini-bus fleets, mono-rails and computer rail services, urban planning and design, re-configuring of existing, radial road pattern into ring and radial pattern, creating of bye-passes and also improvement of road capacity at bottlenecks and junctions.
Then Chief Minister Omar Abdullah patted his back for setting up of Mass and Rapid Transport System in the two capitals under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Mode , but over three years since then, while nothing has been heard about the reports of RITES, the traffic system, or rather the lack of it has gone from bad to worse. |
