Jammu’s Traffic Crisis Deepens

It is a popular saying that people should learn from the past but it seems that people at helm in Jammu don’t believe in this principle as they are least bothered about the probable fate of traffic signals installed in Jammu city.

The generation of people in Jammu which still remembers things that used to be in 1980s and 1990s must remember the defunct remnants of traffic light signals which were there at Kacchi Chawni lying defunct for years together. During those days people used to dream that when Jammu will have efficient traffic lights again to check the increasing vehicle density and streamline the traffic.

It was in 2012, that Jammu again got the new set of traffic signals to man the vehicular traffic with a hope that lakhs of vehicles will be streamlined as the prestigious project worth Rs 2.50 crore started with 10 traffic signals at important intersections of the city with a promise that soon more such signals will be installed in a phased manner. With the passage of time, the installation of traffic signals spread across the city with almost all crossings having these sets of red, green and yellow lights blinking in a way to ensure chaos-free traffic.

After this transformation, Jammu saw another technological breakthrough in the shape of the Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS) promising zero tolerance against violations of traffic rules. As each of this accomplishment required crore of rupees and resources in a big way but now with the things in existence, the city has unfortunately been pushed back to square one as many of these so-called intelligent traffic signals turning totally redundant without helping the commuters to navigate in a hassle-free manner or record any of the violations, for which the helmsmen have spent crores of rupees.

With such a dismal situation, the not-so-diligent commuters having full faith about dysfunction of these lights hardly care about the green, red or yellow signals at the crossings as they preferred to find a convenient time to jump the traffic signals while driving in a jig-jag manner to save time giving two hoots to traffic norms and the risk which is in not following the signals.

Adding to the predicament, what makes the situation even more worrisome is the absence of a coherent maintenance policy or accountability mechanism for these traffic management systems. Once installed with much fanfare, the responsibility to ensure their regular upkeep seems to vanish into thin air, leaving the infrastructure to decay prematurely. Whether it is due to poor planning, lack of technical expertise, or sheer administrative apathy, the end result is the same: public money is squandered, and citizens are left to deal with the consequences. Instead of learning from earlier failures, authorities appear trapped in a cycle of repeating the same mistakes, thereby undermining public trust and contributing to the growing chaos on Jammu’s roads.

It is really intriguing that despite projection of this significant issue in print and electronic media, the concerned authorities seem to be in deep slumber or deliberately neglecting the issue as if their target was only to install these systems and give bounties to parties bagging the contracts for the same and nothing else.