Shillong, February 22: The traffic snarl and congestion of roads in rush hours particularly during school beginning times in the morning and during closing times in the afternoon and also during office hours is a common sight and has become a sort of menace in Tura town in recent times; and the district administration as well as the public are grappling with the situation without much immediate solution in sight in the face of ever growing numbers of vehicles particularly that of smaller passengers vehicles like cars, SUVs and passenger ferrying commercial auto rickshaws with newly registered vehicles hitting the road on a daily basis.
The problem is compounded all the more due to wanton and haphazard manner of parking on either sides of the road thus blocking the smooth passage of other moving vehicles particularly at busiest commercial points like Ringrey tri junction up to the District Medical & Health Officer’s office via District Auditorium, Chandmary junction, Hawakhana, Der Mile, Araimile besides the main Tura bazaar which are already narrow and congested due to unplanned construction of houses and mushrooming of petty shops. Ofcourse, there are not many parking lots and ample empty spaces are available either for vehicle owners to park their cars whenever they needed to stop at these places for some errands.
Keeping these in view and in pursuance of Hon’ble Supreme Court’s directives and guidelines for the road safety aspects and taking corrective and preparatory steps to avoid road accidents and regulate traffic, a meeting of the District Committee involving all the stakeholders was held on 21st February, 2017 under the Chairmanship of Deputy Commissioner, West Garo Hills District, Tura, Pravin Bakshi in his office chamber. The Deputy Commissioner in his brief address, emphasized the need to have in place a comprehensive and holistic policy to ensure safety of pedestrians, commuters, children and elderly besides taking recourse to preventive and corrective steps to minimize traffic congestions and road accidents particularly in the context of Tura town where the numbers of vehicles have grown to unthinkable proportion in the last five years.
In the discussion that followed, a new comprehensive and revised traffic policy to regulate and address or to ease to certain extent, the problem of road congestion of Tura town by way of adding or removing or turning some connection sub ways into one ways have been mooted, the details of which will be prepared and notified after consultations with all concerned authorities that matters in due course of time. In the course of discussion, it came to fore that one of the contributory factors for the added traffic congestion was because of playing of auto rickshaws with impunity in the streets of Tura town from other nearby licensed zones.
It was therefore, decided to come hard not only on such auto rickshaws but also on all violators of Traffic rules. The widening of roads wherever possible, removing of illegal encroachments from the side of the road and construction of embarkation and disembarkation points were also discussed in the meeting. The progress of under construction lay byes, one below Tura Civil Hospital and another at New Tura adjacent to Sericulture Department’s plot were also reviewed.
