Massive traffic snarls on the main thoroughfares of Guwahati during peak hours have become a daily affair, but the city authorities are clueless about how to deal with them. The ongoing construction of flyovers and the digging of roads for laying water pipes and underground cables have aggravated the situation, reducing effective carriageways. The number of registered vehicles outpacing the total population in the capital city, as reported by this newspaper in its Tuesday edition, partly explains the bumper-to-bumper traffic. The hope for the completion of the ongoing construction work to permanently ease traffic congestion will turn out to be an illusion if public transport is not strengthened immediately. In the absence of adequate, affordable public mass transport like city buses, personal mobility solutions will continue to be the driver of growth in registered vehicles in the city. Mixed traffic is another factor behind traffic congestion. Irresponsible double parking of vehicles on the roadside by some vehicle owners and drivers and vendors occupying footpaths, forcing pedestrians to walk along the traffic lanes, have made it worse. Guwahati Municipal Corporation’s inability to earmark vending zones has led to the encroachment of footpaths. The creation of vending zones is also crucial to segregate unregistered vendors from registered vendors and curb them from carrying on with their unauthorised vending. The number of unauthorised vendors has increased manifold, and this has led to almost all footpaths on the main thoroughfares of the city being virtually turned into market places. GMC Authorities carrying out evictions to clear the footpaths failed to address it as vendors encroached upon those due to the failure of the corporation to notify and create dedicated vending zones for registered vendors. Some people buying vegetables and other goods from vendors encroaching on footpaths park their vehicles on the road, blocking half of the lane, without caring that it adds to traffic congestion. Those individuals, when caught in a traffic jam due to similar irresponsible parking for buying goods from roadside vendors, will blame poor traffic management but will not care to reflect that the cooperation of city residents and road users is crucial to ease congestion and ensure smooth traffic. At the same time, the failure of the authorities to repair and maintain footpaths in several localities also compels pedestrians to walk on the roads and streets, slowing down traffic even on interior roads and by-lanes. When vehicles use these arterial roads and by-lanes to bypass traffic jams on main roads, these narrow streets are chock-a-block for hours. Thus, traffic congestion along the main roads of the city has also spilled over to different localities, making the lives of residents miserable. The assurance by the government of traffic congestion easing after completion of the ongoing construction of flyovers has brought the debate over whether flyovers are a sustainable solution to city traffic woes into policy discourse. Traffic experts seek to disagree with the government’s view and insist that flyovers without the simultaneous strengthening of mass public transport only encourage more personal vehicles to come on the road. While for the initial few years the flyovers provided relief by facilitating seamless traffic over traffic junctions, gradually, due to the addition of more personal vehicles, roads started becoming overcrowded at another traffic junction beyond the coverage of the flyovers. Growth in the economy is allowing banks and other financial sectors to provide more credit facilities for personal mobility solutions with a small down payment and easy monthly instalments spread over longer years. Besides, due to the horizontal expansion of the city, the distance from home to the workplace has also increased significantly, which requires many office goers to opt for personal mobility solutions, particularly in areas not well connected with city buses or other modes of affordable public transport. Poor city bus service is typical of most Indian cities, not just Guwahati. Official estimates show that while China has six buses per 1,000 people, India has only four buses per 10,000 people, which explains why the number of personal vehicles continues to rise steadily in Indian cities, including Guwahati. Mere adding more buses is not going to solve the problem if the routes of city buses are not rationalised and strictly enforced. Besides, city buses not parking at the bus stops or parking in the middle of the road and blocking the passage of other vehicles is a recurring problem that adds to traffic congestion. Addressing this problem is no rocket science and only requires bus drivers to adhere to the norm and the authorities to be strict against violations, but neither the bus owners nor the city traffic authorities are keen to prevent recurrence, which is reflective of their apathy towards the woes of city residents, including bus passengers. Traffic management in the city needs a complete overhaul based on a scientific analysis of traffic flow. No structural or policy-based intervention can provide a sustainable solution to traffic snarls in Guwahati without the active cooperation of city residents and visitors.