Maging the City Traffic

There seems to be a very visible attempt by those in charge of maging the traffic of Guwahati to demonstrate that they are doing a very efficient job. The first thing to keep in mind about maging the traffic of any city efficiently is that the problems of traffic magement are not the same in two different cities. The available road space is different, the amount of available parking space is different and the very priorities are bound to be different. When roads were first widened in Guwahati, people were told that all arterial roads would have two-lane traffic in each direction. We now find that the double lanes are there, but in many cases the left lane is being used as parking space, thus leaving only one lane for traffic. And since herringbone parking has been given up in favour of linear parking, we have lost a lot of parking space to incompetent drivers uble to do any tight parking. The most inconsiderate facet of our traffic magement is the closure to entries of by-lanes at too many places. A motorist who had to make a right turn to get home, is now compelled to make a left turn and do a U-turn several hundred metres away to return to the by-lane where he lives. This is unfair for a country that has been uble to keep fuel prices down. Most traffic srls in Guwahati are created by motorists uble to negotiate a neat U-turn who need two or three reversing operations for it. Those in charge of traffic magement in the city are not aware of such driving ibilities because there are no driving tests these days for driving licences. Filly, the traffic authorities of Guwahati are totally unconcerned about pedestrians. They too have a right to use our streets safely.