Be it traffic police or municipal corporations or PWD or various other bodies like the Delhi Jal Board, power and telecom companies and others that dig the roads at different places of the city for repair work without ensuring smooth passage of traffic: They all have collectively failed Delhi.
Every other day, Delhi is brought to a standstill due to reasons varying from rainfall (even minor) to failure of traffic signals, breakdown of DTC buses, VIP movement, potholes on the road, uprooted trees and so on.
"There is lack of enforcement of traffic rules. On a busy road, people come from the wrong side without any fear of prosecution. There is wrong parking, encroachment of roads by vendors and nobody does anything. Metro work on ring road also affects the traffic but it's more so due to other arbitrary construction. There are many places where there are no traffic lights, or they don't work. It seems like no one is doing their job here in Delhi these days. And then it's the people as well who don't follow traffic rules," said Deepak Malhotra, an IT professional.
According to traffic officials, lack of integration of multi-modal transport is one of the major causes. "There are no parking and halting points for rickshaws, autos and gramin sewa vehicles, which are usually haphazardly parked outside the metro stations slowing down the traffic and often bringing it to a grinding halt, especially in the side lanes. There's no demarcated pickup and drop off points for private vehicles either. So vehicles dropping off passengers at the metro station have to stop at the main road in order to disembark passengers, thereby reducing the road space for other vehicles and slowing down the traffic," said a traffic official.
Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Sandeep Goel, however, feels that faulty road designs are responsible for the mess. "Six-lane roads suddenly convert into four-lanes or less at many places, resulting in bottlenecks," Goel said.
The problem is compounded by the fact that with over 95 lakh vehicles registered in Delhi alone, there are only around five thousand traffic policemen to regulate them. And with many of them busy issuing challans to the traffic violators, there are only a handful left to direct vehicles at the busy intersections to ensure smooth flow of traffic. While the traffic police has been planning to move towards smart automated traffic management system for years now, but there hasn't been any significant progress on that front, barring a few trials here and there.
Parking is yet another major problem that is responsible for the whole traffic mess. "If you pass through any busy road, you will find out that in most cases, there will be a stretch where vehicles are parked right on the road blocking most of the carriageway leaving little space for the arriving vehicles to pass. Due to this, a bottleneck is created where traffic flow completely stops at that stretch and suddenly improves once you cross it. But in the meantime, the long trail of vehicles not only throws traffic out of gear in that road, but also on adjoining roads, creating a complete deadlock," said a transport official.
Special Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Dr Muktesh Chander feels that Rs100 fine for unlawful parking is not sufficient to deter people from parking on the roads. "If a person parks his vehicle in a parking lot, he has to pay Rs100 for 3-4 hours. And if he parks on the road, he has to pay a challan of the same amount. But roadside parking gives him convenience to park his vehicle near his destination. Add to the fact that even with ten percent chance of him getting caught and persecuted, parking on road will practically only cost him Rs10 against Rs100 for parking in a parking lot. So unless the fine amount is substantially increased, there won't be any deterrent for people to stop them from parking on the roads," he explained.