Unfinished footpaths, double parking cause severe traffic snarls during peak hours
PANAJI
With the last of the city roads which were blocked to facilitate ‘smart city’ work – Caculo Mall to STP-Tonca – finally thrown open last week, one would have thought that Panaji residents’ woes vis-a-vis the chaos and traffic congestion will have ended.
Quite to the contrary, traffic snarls and frequent jams are commonplace in the city owing to heavy machinery of the IPSCDL contractors continuing to prowl around on the roads going about the residual works, including the finishing of half-done footpaths.
The worst affected is the road from St Inez junction to Caculo mall and beyond. The footpaths lining both flanks of this road are incomplete forcing pedestrians to walk along the roads impeding the flow of traffic. Worse, vehicle users senselessly park cars on both sides narrowing the width for actual traffic flow.
In the main city centre, footpaths along multiple streets are still incomplete and the residual work is still ongoing. Contractors use trucks and heavy machinery to transport material like cement blocks and drain lids thus rendering entire stretches of these roads inaccessible for vehicular movement.
Consequently traffic snarls and jams are a common site along the MG Road and the 18th June Road, two of the main thoroughfares of the city. The traffic problem is particularly severe during peak hours, when people are rushing to work in the morning and when they leave offices to get home in the evening and the bulldozers and trucks obstruct movement.
At several locations in the city, road signages indicating ‘No Entry’ zones, no-parking areas, no left or right turns and with such other crucial information, have not yet been installed. Vehicles, especially rent-a-cabs driven by tourists often move in the wrong direction along one-way streets adding to the commotion and chaos.
