The volume of traffic in J&K, like all other places, is increasing with each passing day. The departments that take care of the roads and the movement of traffic on it, have regularly been bolstering the infrastructure and upgrading the skills to meet the challenge, but the problem refuses to go away. The result is in front of us all. Even in these pandemic days when the graph of human activities is low than the usual, we encounter traffic jams that consume long hours. Not to speak of the Srinagar-Jammu Highway which is often in the news for worst traffic jams, even the city roads are witnessing terrible jams. In this regard some of the spots are now known for gridlocks. The major road that passes through Srinagar and connects the South and North of Kashmir gives tough time to the traffic staff, and also to the commuters. The jams are horrible particularly during peak hours – morning time when people go to offices and to the business establishments, and evenings when they return back to homes.
The major jams are seen at three crossings – Nowgam, Sanatnagar and Bemina. These are the points that witness a huge rush of traffic, resulting in daily traffic jams. For years people were expecting that fly overs would be constructed at these points to ease out the traffic movement. But, even after some baseline movement on these projects nothing actually moved. The situation worsened with each passing day. Now that the talk of constructing grade separaters on all the three crossings – Nowgam, Sanatnagar and Bemina – is back in the official circles, one can only hope that this time the actual work begins and people finally find the three crossings free of traffic jams. This is the time when the officials need to be reminded that there is a need to speed up the matters and once the work begins there should a strict adherence to the deadlines, and a constant monitoring is ensured on that count.