Daily Times

LAHORE: The city traffic police have failed to maintain traffic flow as citizens witnessed massive traffic jams in the entire city due to protests and other development activities in the provincial metropolis on a daily basis, Daily Times has learnt on Thursday.

People faced immense problems in reaching their destinations and they had to use alternate routes which were also choked with heavy volumes of traffic. People from all walks of life have demanded that provincial government must take notice of the traffic jams that cause severe hardship to common man. Millions of rupees are burnt in the form of smoke on a daily basis in the city as thousands of vehicles struck in traffic jams consume costly fuel while standing on the roads in traffic jams, which seem to be an ever increasing phenomenon on the main arteries of the city.

Poor management on part of traffic police, road works, bad civic sense and protest demonstrations on the main roads are to be blamed for this wastage of resources and time. For the last couple of months, road users experienced massive traffic jams on the city’s main as well as link roads due not only to development projects on different areas of the city but several protest demonstrations.

Though the city was facing traffic problems for many weeks, police have not succeeded in easing citizens’ troubles. Mostly, wardens were absent from the main squares which created more abnormality in the traffic flow and resultantly, the traffic burden shifted other roads which also become jammed as these have no capacity to manage this massive load of four wheels.

Traffic on Ferozpur Road, Canal Road, The Mall, Jail Road, Main Boulevard, Davis Road, Allama Iqbal Road GT Road, Mcleod Road Railway Station, Egerton Road, Empress Road, Multan Road, and its linking arteries was completely choked for many hours. Traffic police also failed to maintain traffic flow. In this situation, the traffic burden increased on other roads.

Ambulances carrying emergencies are also stuck in the traffic jam while the road users had to face a lot of troubles for hours to move from one place to another. People driving on roads said that the traffic police should have devised a diversion plan to facilitate citizens. They criticised traffic wardens over absence from many intersections during peak times as well as those areas where different groups held protests demonstration.

Citizen Shahbaz who was stuck in the traffic jam told Daily Times that besides time wastage the traffic mess also caused economic loss in terms of costly fuel because the vehicular engines remained started all the time due to crippling traffic flow.