Daily Times

PESHAWAR: The long queues of vehicles on Khyber Road and Charsadda Road besides other areas in the provincial capital have made the life miserable for the Peshawarites.

According to data available with Regional Transport Authority (RTA) at least 526 buses, 1,146 mini buses, 644 wagons, and 5,030 Taxis while 21,500 rickshaws ply on roads in Peshawar daily. Similarly, the exact figure of unregistered public transport vehicles on Peshawar roads is still not truly known.

Talking to Daily Times Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Traffic Raheem Hussain said that there were 2,100 Traffic wardens monitoring the traffic in Peshawar daily. More traffic wardens would be recruited to control the traffic of one of the most congested cities in the country, he added.

He maintained that around 80 per cent people in Peshawar were driving without holding a license while most of the people were not following the traffic rules. Hussain added that hundreds of pushcart vendors and shopkeepers have encroached upon the Service Road which added to the traffic jams. The official said that no proper parking areas with the shopping plazas and malls, was another reason to worsen the traffic on the roads.

Deputy Director Regional Transport Authority Salman Nisar told this scribe that around 10,000 new four stroke rickshaws had been registered with RTA while soon the electric Rickshaws would be plying the roads as those Rickshaws were environment friendly.

“The Mass Transit Bus Service project will start from first January 2017 as with this project the rush of vehicles and old buses will greatly reduce,” he added.

Replying to a question regarding the presence of green taxis specifically manufactured for Punjab, on Peshawar roads; Salman Nisar said that it was the responsibility of the Excise and Taxation Department to tackle the issue. He added that the RTA will soon be discussing the matter with the Excise officials.

He also said that the provincial government has already signed a memorandum of understanding with a foreign company to establish the Circular Train in Peshawar, Mardan, Nowshera and Charsadda. Yar Muhammad Afridi Public Transport Association Peshawar vice president claimed that the provincial government had implemented taxes on transporters. He alleged that the taxes were increasing with each passing day.

He said it was making life of the transporters miserable. He also claimed that the traffic police officials were penalizing transporters without any care for the law and heavy fines were levied against the transport vehicles. He demanded the government to give relief to the transporters by reducing the huge fines and bringing them down to the fines imposed on traffic rules violations in Punjab. Kamran Khan a resident of Peshawar expressed his dissatisfaction with the efforts of the provincial government and said that he had not observed any change in the past three years of the PTI government.