UT police opt for automatic traffic control,trigger automatic jams

Such was the jam that vehicles were lined up right from the Kala Gram lights till the Railway Crossing light point. To make the situation worse,heavy vehicles such as trucks were too lined up in the jam. Hardly anybody was able to reach office or any other destination on time today.

The worst affected were ambulances,which got stuck in the jam and did not have any other option but to wait. The traffic policemen present at the light points were just mute spectators. On normal days too,traffic on this most frequently used link road between Panchkula and Chandigarh is heavy but not as bad as it was today.

Till Monday,traffic was manually controlled at three major light points – Kalagram,railway station and transport chowk. The manual traffic management had been started by the traffic police after seeing heavy traffic flow on this stretch during peak hours.

But the Chandigarh Traffic Police announced a reversal to the old system,claiming it is better than the manual one and expecting it to help in controlling and managing traffic in a better manner,especially during peak hours. Justifying the “experiment”,Deputy Superintendent of Police (Traffic) Vijay Kumar said,“We have reverted to the old system only on a trial basis. I have clarified this on the Chandigarh Page of Facebook too.”

Asked what had led to the “experiment”,Kumar replied,“We had received complaints from commuters that the system of controlling traffic manually was not working well. Thus,we decided to try the old system for a couple of days. We had tried the same system inside the city on Monday and it worked well. Perhaps,the traffic at that time was less.”

He added,“The Traffic Police will examine the situation on Wednesday and decide which system to stick to.” The Traffic Police might continue the ‘experiment’ for another 24 hours but commuters are already facing harassment due to the “trial”.

“It was a nightmare. It was as if the old system was efficient enough to control the menace of traffic jams that Chandigarh Police decided to switch over to the old system. The Department should immediately revert to the manual system to put an end to this harassment,” opined Sector 20 resident Kunal Mittal.