Srinagar, June 27: It is a glaring example of poor planning: Jammu and Kashmir has just half percent of its land under the use of roads, leading to acute congestion on roads and the ensued traffic mismanagement.
According to Trafficinfo, the Department’s annual publication, while 25 to 35 per cent of land in many states has been earmarked for roads, Jammu and Kashmir is lagging behind by a wide margin.
Interestingly, the state is far behind Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata, where the land earmarked for roads is 16, 11 and 5 per cent respectively. “The roads in the state, especially in the twin cities of Srinagar and Jammu, are bound to choke and the management of traffic accordingly becomes a casualty,” writes the former inspector general of police (Traffic), M A Shah, in the Trafficinfo.
“For those who compare the traffic management in developed cities with Srinagar must know that the former use about 25per cent of its land for its roads. They cannot therefore draw parallels between the

working of Traffic Police of the West and the European countries with the performance of Traffic Police in the Jammu and Kashmir.”
According to Shah, although the village roads (local streets) and district roads (collector streets) are of standard width of one and two lane respectively, yet the state and national highways (sub-arterial and arterial) are substandard. “Instead of four lanes, the sub-arterial roads are of two lanes whereas the arterial roads are of standard width of two lanes,” he writes, adding, “Accordingly these narrow roads are unable to take on huge pressure of the transport, resulting into frequent road traffic accidents with colossal damages.”
Interestingly, the land under road use has been either partially or fully encroached upon by vendors or has been half-occupied by troops by setting up of barricades and concertina wires, leading to the further narrowing of roads. “This phenomenon has left little or no space for the footpath users who constitute about 80 per cent of the traffic, as a result they are forced to move on to main roads for executing their journeys thereby squeezing the roads for free flow of the already inflated vehicular traffic on the roads,” Shah writes.
The Traffic Department has called for rational land planning of the state to address the necessary road requirements. It has also urged the state to lay stress on standardization and expansion of roads, construction of fly-overs and overhead walkways, building of bypasses and urban express ways. The Department has also called for removal of bottlenecks at various places, especially in the Srinagar city, to ensure smooth flow of traffic.
The Department has, in the Trafficinfo, identified at 15 major places in Srinagar city where different kinds of bottlenecks need to be immediately removed. Also, 25 road networks have been identified for improvement and widening. These include the “critical measures” like widening Pantha Chowk intersection to Zewan Crossing, widening of Residency Road from Polo View crossing to Hari Singh High Street; widening of Boulevard Road from Dalgate Junction to Nehru Park, widening of Municipality road from Karan Nagar to Fire Service crossing and widening of Rambagh-Chanapora road.
“Such measures need to be implemented in letter and spirit if the traffic congestion in the city is to be lessened,” said a senior traffic police official. “Dilapidated condition of roads coupled with lack of road safety measures often becomes the cause of road traffic accidents. There are numbers black spots and sites on various state roads, which are chronic cause of road traffic accidents.”
Pertinently, the vehicular population in Jammu and Kashmir stood at whopping 6, 68,445 by March 2009. This is excluding thousands of vehicles of security forces and the inter-state vehicles, which are not registered in the state. Approximately 50,000 vehicles add up annually to the state motor fleet. In Srinagar city, the vehicular population has increased from 1, 23,319 in March 2005 to 1,56, 991 in March 2009, indicating an increase of 27 percent. This population in Jammu city has witnessed an increase from 2,79, 652 vehicles in March 2005 to 3,73,127 vehicles in March 2009, showing an increase of 33 percent. More than 1300 people have lost their lives in road accidents across the state in the past 15 months.

Lastupdate on : Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:30:00 GMT
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