Traffic chaos on main thoroughfares in the provincial metropolis has become a routine mainly because of insufficient traffic police staff, increasing number of vehicles and lack of coordination among the relevant departments.

The government claims to have taken firm steps to ensure smooth traffic flow on the roads and has set up phone help lines and SMS service for public to inform the traffic police control about any traffic blockade in order to get help for regulation of the system.

The traffic police have also planned to introduce traffic wardens to improve the functioning of the department and get the citizens rid of the disturbed situation. The Mufti Mehmud Flyover has finally been opened to traffic two weeks ago and the people might have felt a little bit change in the traffic system. However, regulating the undisciplined traffic is still a gigantic task.

Several departments, including police, excise, district administration, Peshawar cantonment, transport and Peshawar Development Authority, are responsible for the unruly traffic because they have no coordination. The officials of every department hold the staff of the other department responsible and never accept own failure in this regard. It has become a common practice that every new SSP traffic after taking charge of his office would announce his own traffic plan and thus during the past some years many plans have been announced.

The recent changes, especially the reshaping of U-turns, have eased the pressure on some busy roads, but in many areas the problem of traffic congestion still remains unresolved.

Now doubt, the security checkpoints, encroachments, untrained drivers, protest demonstrations, rallies, increasing population and small roads contribute to the traffic problem, but lack of sound planning, negligence and corrupt practices on the part of various departments has been the main cause of the ugly situation.

The introduction of the SMS service seems to be an exercise in futility because a number of people said that they had complained to the police about traffic blockade, but no one arrived to regulate the system.

DSP traffic Asghar Marwat said that at present the traffic police department had 560 personnel for double shifts, which could not meet the requirement and thus a new plan of traffic warden was approved by the government to overcome the problems.

“We are trying to manage the system through the available staff and resources, but frequent protest rallies disrupt the entire process,” he said.

Mr Marwat said that over 0.7 million vehicles used the Peshawar roads daily and the existing infrastructure could not cater to such a huge number of vehicles. He said that it was the need of the hour to construct new underpasses at different places like Kharkhano chowk, Phase-III, Phase-4, Haji Camp, etc.

About the Mufti Mehmud Flyover, the DSP said that the people were facing some problems near Shahi Bagh, but the issue could be resolved if both the flyovers (Mufti Mehmud and Malik Saad) were interlinked for easing the traffic pressure. He also suggested fencing both sides of the Mufti Mehmud Flyover to avoid any untoward incident. In the prevailing situation, the official said many sensitive buildings like Peshawar Central Prison, Peshawar High Court, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, Radio Pakistan, Traffic Police Lines, etc were extremely vulnerable and a fence could help avoid terrorist acts.

He also proposed construction of overhead bridges at some central points like Lahore Bus Terminal, Hashtnagri, University Road (near university campus) and Firdus Chowk to avoid accidents.

He said that the new plan of traffic wardens would help overcome most of the problems by ensuring strict implementation of the traffic laws and creating awareness among roads users.

The DSP said that the total number of traffic police personnel would go up from the current 560 to 1,880 with the launch of traffic warden system and all the staff would be trained like motorway police. He suggested that all the time-barred vehicles needed to be discarded so as to minimise the number of vehicles on the roads.

Another traffic police officer said on condition of anonymity that the traffic issues would remain to tease the motorists unless the security checkpoints were removed from the main roads. “There are checkpoints at key points where every vehicle has to wait till getting a nod from the security personnel,” he said.

The official suggested installation of scanners at checkpoints at the most sensitive locations. He said that traffic police had installed 120 CCTV cameras in Peshawar district to monitor traffic, but the police were least bothered to take advantage of them.

Regional Transport Authority secretary Niamatullah Khan told Dawn that actual data of the vehicles plying on Peshawar roads was not available after arrival of vehicles owned by the internally displaced persons. He said that the transport department had launched a new service of 50 air-conditioned coaches from Chamkani to Hayatabad and Karkhano Market to provide quality transport to the passengers at reasonable fare. He said that with the launch of the new service the transporters themselves would stop using the decades old buses and wagons when the passengers would avoid them on the bus stops.

Sharing his observations about the traffic issues, he said that population and number of vehicles was fast increasing and the citizens lacked awareness regarding civic issues. “The people are using vehicles for minor activities and they are in the habit to move repeatedly on different roads not thinking that they are adding to the traffic woes,” he said. H said that RTA had to depend on traffic police to penalize violators of traffic rules. He suggested linking up the city circular road with Ring Road to divide traffic volume, saying that the non-permitted vehicles used for commercial purposes like rent-a-cars, pickups and schools buses were the main cause of the traffic congestion. 

The RTA secretary suggested banning all the vehicles of other districts and scraping the decades old vehicles. “We have started issuing permits to the non-permitted commercial vehicles to collect data and generate revenue for the government,” he said, adding that 1,400 taxi cabs had been issued permits recently by charging Rs2,265 each.

Haji Amanullah, a transporter, opposed discarding of the old vehicles, saying that the government should compensate the owners first or give them new model vehicles on easy installments otherwise any such decision would be tantamount to their economic murder.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2015

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