From past 9 Years, Traffic lights are mere showpieces
Abrar A. Mattoo
SRINAGAR, Aug 10: In the year 2012, all the major traffic junctions in Srinagar were installed with traffic lights for effective and comprehensive traffic management in the city, but for all these years, at the majority of these junctions, the lights have been found either completely dysfunctional, or regularly out of order.
In absence of a proper traffic guiding system and with enormous additions of new vehicles plying on roads, Srinagar’s streets are always jam packed through the day, especially during the rush hours. The regular commuters often liken the city’s worsening traffic situation to Mumbai’s tiring traffic scene and Bangalore’s long and terrible traffic jams.
Pertinently, the city administration attempted to resolve the traffic situation by sealing the junctions and cutting the U-turns next to them, but that approach has hardly worked, and the city streets are choked all the same.
“The traffic jams have become a new headache for us. Previously, it never used to be an issue, but authorities are failing to light upon this issue. The major reason for traffic jams in Srinagar is the manual handling of the traffic because there is no coordination in that. A proper, intelligent traffic system would solve the problem to a great extent,” commented Sarhan Bashir, an electrical engineer by profession and a regular commuter from Sanat Nagar to Lal-Chowk.
“The administration has been repeating the word ‘smart city’ for almost five years now, but how can we believe in such a far-fetched dream when we don’t have a simple working traffic lights system in the city?” asked Adil Rashid, a university scholar, while talking to Kashmir Despatch.
The failure of Srinagar’s traffic lights system can be attributed to poor management and lack of a scientific approach. Nearly 100 crore rupees spent on the installation system have proven to be the money down the drain. Subsequently, the city administration has also been going in at the introduction of ITSS (Intelligent Traffic Signal System) in the city for a long time now, but this project as well has been jumping deadline after deadline.
When Kashmir Despatch contacted Ishtiyaq Ahmad, Joint Commissioner Works, Srinagar Municipal corporation (the department that oversees the installation and maintenance of traffic lights in the city) the official said that in about a month’s time, SMC would finish the project and have intelligent traffic lights installed at sixty-six traffic junctions in the city.
“These traffic lights would boast of state-of-the-art features and would be intelligent enough to fix the time based on the traffic situation at its own junction and all the nearby junctions. The lights would also be fixed with cameras and sim cards that would connect them with a central command unit and allow the traffic to be managed and controlled from an integrated position. Surely, this would ease the traffic problem to a great deal in the city,” the official added further.
Srinagar’s Intelligent Traffic Signal System is being rolled out under a New-Delhi sponsored scheme called Amrut (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation). The new system would upgrade the already existing outdated lights and have many state-of-the-art features, including Integrated Command and Control System (ICCS), Red Light Violation Detection System (RLVDS), Speed Violation Detection System (SVDS), and Pedestrian Signal Lights and Vehicle Sensing System.
Though no doubt that all of these features would ease the traffic situation in Srinagar, yet it remains to be seen whether this new project – like the old one – would also succumb to poor management and administrative apathy.
