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| City’s passenger sheds ‘grabbed’, traffic sense lost | | |
AD Singh
Jammu, Feb 3: There is no rule on the roads of Capital City. Throwing traffic out of gear, ‘Matadors’ –as the local passenger vehicles are known –can come to a screeching halt where the driver sees passerby standing. The passenger sheds have almost been grabbed by beggars, rag pickers and the like who have set up even makeshift kitchens and beddings in the structure where passengers were supposed to wait for the lift which never stops there. Signal a Matador anywhere and here it is the ‘bus stop’.
As the master plan for new flyovers and road widening awaits funding and execution, the authorities in the city even fail to maintain and make full use of the current infrastructure to check the traffic chaos in the city.
With the city of Jammu swelling its territory the roads of the city are overburdened with the increasing traffic resulting into a traffic chaos and an important contributor to this chaos is the un-regularized public transport system in the city. As the city of temples extends its boundaries the volume of dependents on the public transport system also increases but the commuters as well as the operators of the public transport system are yet to learn the traffic sense and unfortunately even the authorities don't seem to be interested in creating the traffic sense among people.
Despite heavy traffic on the road the public transport vehicles don't mind halting in the middle of the road to drop the commuters amidst the traffic and neither the commuters want to be denied of the convenience of boarding and getting off the vehicle wherever they wish. As this custom of picking and dropping the commuters to the best of the convenience of the operators and commuters remains persistent in the city the smooth flow of traffic and the safety of commuters always remain on stake. Even in the planned areas of Jammu where proper bus stops have been made the operators never bother to stop at them and so neither the Jammu Municipal Corporations shows any interest in their maintenance nor do the traffic police authorities make any attempt to regularize the stoppage of public transport vehicles at these stops but still the advertisement hoardings on these stops remain up to date and the JMC in its punch line remains "Keen to serve you better".
During a survey of these bus stops the early times team witnessed that most of these were not in serviceable condition as heaps of litter keeps them occupied. But to our surprise the bus stop at the Main Stop, Gandhi Nagar was though quite clean but the reason for that is that it is used as dwelling by beggars. The Commissioner JMC, Parshotam Sharma when contacted on the issue, denied having knowledge of any such dwelling in the bus stops and even observed that the JMC is doing the best to its efficiency in maintaining the bus stops and passed the issue towards traffic police authorities for not being able to make the buses stop at these stops.
SSP Traffic, Jammu, Parminder Singh when contacted to comment on the issue said that first of all the bus stops in the city have not been constructed keeping in view the epicenters of commuting and secondly there are not enough bus stops in the city that a regulation can be passed to bring a complete end to this pick and drop custom. Further, SSP Traffic considered that at present parking is the biggest issue before the traffic control authorities which result in a complete traffic chaos and though the traffic police is working hard to regulate the traffic every day but to solve this problem immediately a collective effort of different departments of the government along with the cooperation of the general public is required.
But the questions which still remain unanswered are that if the JMC is performing its duties well then why the slum dwelling at the bus stop still remains out of the knowledge of JMC and if the custom of pick and drop amidst the traffic continues as such how can we expect a smooth flow of traffic in the city where traffic is increasing every day.
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