Early Times Report
JAMMU, Jan 31: Illegal parking in various parts of the city is not only creating traffic chaos but eating away road space, leading to frequent traffic jams.
In the areas like, Gummat Chowk, Residency Road, Jain Bazar, Panjtirthi, Parade, Shalamar, Purani Mandi, Raghunath Bazar, BC Road, High Court Road and Canal Road, it is an arduous task for pedestrians to walk through these areas where honking and screeching vehicles are the order of the day besides accidents and head-on collisions are a common sight.
City has become so congested particularly that people had to search, were to park vehicles. At many places drivers have created their own unauthorized parking and leave their four or two wheelers there during the night hours.
The ever-increasing number of vehicles coupled with limited road infrastructure and paucity of parking space has been playing havoc with the traffic management in city. Congestion is emerging as the biggest problem and in absence of proper management and manpower shortage, traffic police personnel have failed to deal with the situation.
"Problem is for the commercial vehicles to pass through the roads as at number of places, people park their vehicles on sides, leaving little space for movement and leading to jam", said Suresh Sharma, a local resident.
Officials said that there had been some problems in the past, but under a new master plan, parking places have been given a priority. "We are waiting for the funds to establish multi-parking buildings and consultation is going on with the private players", they said.
However, sources said that other plans for creation of multi-parking structures at Bus Stand and Shalamar Chowk and other projects are struck at survey levels since past five years, no headway has been made to make them functional, despite several official statements from the Ministers, holding the charge of Urban Development. |
