A Terrible Mess In Guwahati!

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: Will Guwahati ever get rid of roads teeming with honking vehicles from nose to tail for hours – right from the morning to the evening? Thanks to the traffic management in the metropolitan city that continues to be a terrible mess.

Office and school goers getting stuck for hours in traffic jams is nothing new in Guwahati. However, what was witnessed in the city on Thursday is something unprecedented. The city literally came to a grinding halt for not less than an hour, that too, in all the main thoroughfares in its heart. Vehicles of all hues were in a stand-off on the GS Road from Ulubari to Six Mile. Criss-crossing the GS Road, there was another traffic snarl – right from Hatigaon to Chandmari via Ganeshguri and RG Baruah Road. The vehicles were locked in such a stand-off that they came to a grinding halt, and they could move only at a snail’s speed at times. It is immediately not known as to what has gone seriously awry in the traffic management in the city that traffic jams continue to recur as often as not.

The problem of the traffic snarl had its off-shoot in the lanes and by-lanes that snaked through either side of GS Road and RG Baruah Road today. Smaller vehicles like autorickshaws and two-wheelers were seen using lanes and by-lanes instead of the GS Road and the RG Baruah Road so as to avoid the traffic snarl. However, within 15-20 minutes all these lanes and by-lanes witnessed similar traffic jams, creating a lot of troubles even for pedestrians, small traders and others.

What has led to such a catastrophic situation in the metropolitan city? Mismanagement, for sure, is one of the major reasons behind such a situation. Even though the traffic branch of the city, like all other branches of the State police force, has long been understaffed, a scientific traffic management could have brought the situation under control to a certain extent.

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