Roads to Vadodara seem to lead to chaos instead

The new route from the neighbouring city is the perfect endurance test for aspiring rallyists: it is narrow; it is roundabout; it presents a diverse sampling of automated and manual vehicles; it has its ups and downs and a zig-zag hilly terrain. Statistics say National Highway 8 is used by 1.5 lakh passenger vehicles and around 8,000 commercial vehicles everyday.

“There is simply no better option”, shrugs a bus passenger, peering out of his window at the serpentine queue of vehicles ahead and behind a few km away from Vadodara.

The pointing finger, as usual, is being passed from the drivers of heavy vehicles (who create a virtual bottleneck on the narrow road a few minutes away from the city), to the police (who seem least interested in doing anything about it) to the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (which is yet to admit it was caught napping by the chaos at the Gotri octroi-post).

After a hellish beginning the brunt of the chaos on the diversion was borne by commuters on Friday and Saturday the highway police has begun distributing maps of the new route at the turn-off and the VMC has spruced up a road next to the octroi-post to avoid overcrowding on the narrow road.

These measures, however, are little guarantee that the chaos will not be repeated. What could lessen the chances is ensuring that heavy vehicles clear the hilly patch near Sindhrot without too many hiccups.

Rural police sub-inspector K V Katara, who claims to have been on his toes for the past two days, says, “There would have been less inconvenience, had the VMC and the police anticipated all the pros and cons in advance”.

The country road cannot be expected to take the place of the NH8, but effective traffic administration can make the going smoother. Even on Sunday morning, when the scene had improved somewhat, vehicles were lined up for two kms between the Sindhrot road and the Gotri octroi post, ostensibly because four huge vehicles could not scale the hilly patch.

Ishwarbhai and Banwantbhai, cleaners of a couple of the guilty vehicles, told Express Newsline that they had had to spend the night waiting for a power vehicle to tow them through the hilly patch. “We weren’t aware of the route nor was anyone around to guide us,” says Rajendra, a driver from Uttar Pradesh.

Admitting that there was a problem, staff at the VMC octroi post at Gotri maintain that the side-road will be used for truck-parking. “One of the nearby nullah bridges are narrow, so we have to get it widened, says an official, adding that additional staff had also been posted at Gotri.

City Police Commissioner R M S Brar and civic commissioner Vilasini Ramachandran, too, admit the scene was particularly chaotic on May 1, but had been brought under control.

Expedite express highway, says minister
State Road and Building Minister Savjibhai Korat has urged Union Surface Transport Minister Devendra Pradhan to expedite the completion of the express highway between Ahmedabad and Vadodara.

According to an official Press release, Korat met Pradhan in Gandhinagar on Sunday and urged him to initiate actions to remove the hurdles in the way of completion of the project so that the the cost of the project did not rise further.