look news india
Traveling on National Highway No. 9 (NH-9), which is the lifeline of Delhi-NCR, is now no less than a nightmare for daily commuters. Due to poor traffic management and faulty road engineering, this important expressway and its service lanes are facing huge traffic jams every day. Especially during the peak hours of going to office in the morning and returning home in the evening, the situation goes completely out of control. Long queues of vehicles have become a common sight near Chhijarsi Cut, Noida Sector-62 Model Town Roundabout, Kanavani Pulia in Indirapuram area and CISF Cut. Drivers have to waste 45 minutes to an hour of extra time to travel a few minutes, due to which there is deep anger among the general public.
The main reasons for traffic jam on a 14-lane wide and modern road like National Highway 9 (NH-9) Noida Ghaziabad are random stopping of vehicles, bottlenecks formed at major intersections, unplanned U-turns and illegal cuts made by the local people. Due to lack of any lane discipline at turning points from the main road to service lanes and local sectors, vehicles get entangled with each other. As a result, vehicles from the expressway to the link roads below come to a halt and vehicles are queued up for several kilometers behind.
The main root of the problem is the private and stunted buses parked on the roadside due to loose control of traffic police on Noida Sector-62 and Chhijarasi Cut. These private buses going towards Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Western Bihar park haphazardly at the junction of service road and main carriageway of NH-9 and load passengers. Due to these erratic vehicles and arbitrary stops of auto-e-rickshaw drivers, the three-lane road gets reduced to just one lane. When heavy vehicles try to pass through this narrow path, the speed of all the light vehicles coming behind comes to a complete halt.
Along with this, the drivers coming from the opposite direction, openly flouting the traffic rules, have made the situation even more critical. Hundreds of two-wheeler, e-rickshaw and car drivers come from the opposite direction to avoid the U-turn gap around Kanavani culvert, CISF cut and Chhijarasi. The collision between speeding legal traffic coming from the front and vehicles coming from the opposite direction not only leads to huge traffic jams, but there is also a possibility of fatal road accidents at all times. Despite repeated complaints from the local people, there is a clear lack of strict challan or legal action against such careless drivers driving in the opposite direction.
Noida and Greater Noida have a vast network of IT hubs, software companies, media institutions and industrial units. Due to this, lakhs of working people from Ghaziabad, Indirapuram, Vasundhara, Vaishali, Kaushambi, Vijayanagar and the entire Trans Hindon region move to Noida every day for their livelihood. When this crowd descends on NH-9 between 8:30 am and 11:00 am, the entire corridor starts gasping. The same situation is seen on the route returning towards Ghaziabad between 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm.
Not only are people’s precious time being wasted due to being stuck in traffic jams for hours, but vehicles continuously starting and running in first and second gear are causing huge consumption of petrol and diesel. This is putting an unexpected financial burden on the common working class. Constant pressing of clutch and brake is increasing mental stress, irritability and physical fatigue among drivers. According to environmentalists, poisonous smoke emanating from vehicles idling during the jam is also pushing the air quality index (AQI) of Trans Hindon and Noida to dangerous levels, causing local residents to face respiratory problems.
Daily commuters and local RWA representatives say the situation is not possible to improve unless the traffic police permanently deploys personnel at sensitive locations during peak hours. At present, due to the absence of traffic policemen at intersections, auto drivers and buses stop arbitrarily in the middle of the road. People are demanding that a special traffic task force should be deployed in the morning and evening at Chhijarasi Cut, CISF Gate, Sector-62 intersection and Kanawani turn, which should adopt the policy of zero tolerance on illegal parking and vehicles moving in the opposite direction.
Additionally, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and local development authorities will have to work together to address the deficiencies in road engineering. There is an urgent need to widen unnecessary and narrow bottlenecks, make service roads encroachment free, build safe foot over bridges for pedestrians and close illegal cuts by installing permanent concrete barriers. Unless there is strict compliance with the rules and road improvement work starts simultaneously, the journey on NH-9 will remain a daily ordeal for millions of passengers.