ITMS failure and poor management of traffic police in Guwahati city

Staff Reporter

Guwahati: Although the much-hyped Integrated Traffic Management System (IMTS) was expected to solve the problems of traffic congestion at least at the major intersections of the city, the reality remains far from the expectations. As some of the traffic lights now lie completely or partially inoperable, Guwahatians continue to face the perils of wasting hours in traffic. And the people using the VIP Road connecting Narengi and Six Mile continue to face the same problem.

The Six Mile locality is a key junction of the city where, apart from the busy GS Road, the VIP Road, Jayanagar Road, and Panjabari Road meet. Although the traffic is supposed to be automatically regulated by the ITMS, the same has been seen to fail on a regular basis. With the traffic lights for the vehicles on VIP Road remaining non-functional, the public driving vehicles are seen taking turns as they like. When traffic lights go out of order, traffic police personnel should man the traffic points as a backup system, but they do not. This is because they have no such backup system. Although three to four traffic police personnel are usually seen under the Six Mile flyover, none of them are noticed on VIP Road.

Similar problems have been faced at multiple junctions, as the traffic lights do not seem to function perfectly.

A local resident of Six Mile said, "At many junctions, the lights are manually controlled by the police personnel present at the location to ensure smooth traffic movement, while at certain points, they are seen managing the traffic in the good old way."

It is not just the general public facing problems, as Minister Jayanta Mallabaruah also faced the same problem and raised the question regarding the lack of ample traffic police personnel at Beltola to regulate the traffic.

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