Rajan Gandhi
The mere mention of old city from City Chowk to Parade , Janipur High Court road, entire Talab Tillo – Akhnoor road or Satwari Chowk sends a shiver down the spine and terror in the heart and minds of Jammu commuters. You name any corner of the winter capital it is a nightmare for the public.
With perpetual traffic jams, convoys of smoke-belching vehicles, unending construction pipe or cable laying it seems all departments are working in tandem to ensure traffic woes of Jammuties get complicated with each passing day. This festive season authorities have ensured that no main bazaar of Jammu remains intact in the name of repairs; be it Lakhdata bazaar, City Chowk to Centre Basic School , Sabzi Mandi to Purani Mandi digging work has been continuously going on and on without keeping in mind the ongoing festive season and resultant hardships to shopkeepers and public specially. One can only pity the wisdom of authorities who took extra ordinary decision of digging work at this juncture. As if all these efforts were not enough – the Parade ground dumping site of JMC just opposite SSP Jammu office adds additional problems to traffic and pedestrians as for entire summer the main drain was blocked, with stinking nullah water overflowing the main road resulting in almost one foot deep potholes on the main road with a cascading effect of traffic movement at snail’s pace. One wonders whether authorities are either sleeping over these issues or they just don’t know the ground realities or the ultimate zero accountability with who cares attitude.
Even repeated intervention of our High Court has not resulted in any viable solution to traffic snarls at Janipur road and right now it seems everyone in the power is clueless to provide any immediate solution to the problem but one thing is clear, will to implement any solution is the root cause of the problem. With the matadors providing door to door pickup and drop services and we the commuters happily accepting their unique services without realizing the consequent long jams, honking , vehicular pollution , road rage incidents and the list goes on and on. There is no one to reign in this mafia of matadors. The only viable solution seems to be make this road one way from Janipur side and all up going traffic be diverted through Rehari road connecting directly at Janipur Chowk . Long term solution includes constructing a ring road from Manda to High Court, Roop Nagar, Akhnoor road utilizing Director Education road , Tallab Tillo- Bohri – Camp , Belicaharana utilizing Tawi’s fourth bridge , Chatha to Kunjwani Chowk by passing Satwari chowk . This will not only ease the daily commuters problems but all heavy vehicles, buses to Akhnoor , Poonch , Rajouri, Moghal road can bypass the entire city. One wonders what 8- 10 traffic cops are doing at Bikram chowk , Amphalla chowk or below Secretariat Chowk as these roads are wide enough to self regulate the traffic and the reasons are obvious. Moreover, Jammu city has the unique distinction of getting traffic lights installed at big round abouts, either the deciding authorities of rest of India don’t know this unique technique or our own officers have faulted and with no accountability this public money to the tune of crores have gone wasted.
Another nemesis for authorities is security vehicle parking of Civil Secretariat despite converting Social Welfare Directorate into parking and for this last year authorities even tried to convert one government school into a parking lot. Easiest way out is shifting Director Health Services to alternative place like NRHM and Family Welfare building at Nagrota and convert this existing place to multi level parking exclusively for Civil Secretariat. This will not only decongest the entire Parade to Shalamar stretch but will also ensure the security of VVIP’s. Similarly at Gandhi Nagar build a multi level underground parking below Dushera ground and Auqaf land opposite Pahalwan and Bansi Mandir, make Apsara road as well as back side road of Apsara as no parking zone on main road and it will not only ease the congestion but will increase the business of entire market many fold.
We think traffic can’t get worse than this but in reality; the worst is yet to come. Motor vehicle ownership grows slowly at low levels of income, shoots up at middle income levels before tapering off at higher incomes, the so-called “saturation” level. For India, the saturation level will be at around 683 vehicles per 1,000 people, versus 807 for China and 853 for the US. We right now have only 120 vehicles per 1,000 people! There will be almost six times more vehicles and majority of these are going to be cars. We are urbanizing wastefully in terms of land – the built-up area is growing faster than the population in nearly all of the largest Indian cities as they devour their rural fringe and Jammu is no exception to this. The average density of the cities have declined by 25% from the 1990s to the 2010s.The capital region of Jammu in particular has exploded spatially without any planning. Our urbanized area has increased many folds and one-way commutes of 20 km to 30 km from Bantalab, Akhnoor Road to Bhatindi, Sidhra to Kunjwani , Bari Brahmana are the new normal.
Our second myth that more roads and flyovers will ease congestion is far from reality. Our engineers and babus think mobility is about moving mainly vehicles, not about moving people. With regard to moving vehicles too, they ignore better traffic management such as stricter enforcement in favor of big bucks spent on road projects such as flyovers and road-widening. The obvious reason after all, that is where money is to be made. But what good is a three-lane carriageway when one is taken up by parked vehicles and another by vendors and hawkers? One’s casual trip to busy entire Old City or entire stretch from Panjthirthi to Bikram chowk is testimony to all this ridiculous traffic management where entire roads are blocked by matadors or reharis . Authorities are in deep slumber. No one talks about better traffic management. What is worse, given its VIP culture, a disproportionate number of cops are deployed to ensure smooth movement of VIP’s, a corollary of this myth is that all Jammuites have equal access to roads. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a city of cars, by cars and for cars. Half a dozen cars with less than a dozen people in them hog as much road space as a bus with five dozen people – public transport meets 60% of travel demand but occupies only 5% of road space. In effect, public money is spent on moving cars in a perverse subsidy. Strengthen the public transport is the mantra for traffic woes.
Parking is our birthright, really!!!! On an average, a car in Jammu is driven only 5% of the time, the rest of the time it is parked, typically on public space. With an approximate market value of Rs 1,000 per square foot and each parked car occupying about 60 square feet, this de facto privatization amounts to robbery of Rs 60,000 per car. In fact, parking outside one’s property anywhere at any time is not an entitlement, it is a commercial transaction. The stupidly low one-time city road tax when one buys a new car does not entitle us to land grab. Public and our government have to think about it.
Metro will solve all problems is another myth. It cannot till we create disincentives for private vehicle owners. Metro is an expensive and ineffective solution to our traffic congestion. Though it is heavily used and overcrowded, its effect on displacing private vehicles is minimal. In many cases, it has replaced buses as the preferred mode of public transport for working class from far flung areas .In Singapore, the cost of acquiring a car is a multiple of its sale price since along with it one has to buy a certificate of entitlement. Only a fixed number of such certificates are allowed based on road capacity. While cities the world over have made parking prohibitively expensive to discourage car use, it remains free or ludicrously low in Jammu and other cities. We persist with a carrot-and-no-sticks approach, which is doomed to fail. If we do not learn from the mistakes of others or from their best practices we have only ourselves to blame. Mizoram has set an ideal example in India where public awareness has made it possible for no honking at all, single lane dedicated to two wheelers, no overtaking at all by cars , giving space and right to other vehicles moving in the specific lane to name a few . For Jammu awareness and participation of public is key to success of this menace. It’s the right time to think upon it before it is too late.
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