With the Government hoping to turn the capital cities of Srinagar and Jammu into Smart cities, improving the road network is undoubtedly the biggest challenge to achieve the objective. The exponential increase in the vehicular traffic and the subsequent long and frequent traffic jams has laid the inevitable importance of planning the city roads. There is no way to check the increase in number of vehicles and it will only swell in the years to come. Therefore, it is imperative for the government to take prompt steps to restructure the road network in the city. Every day we witness worse traffic congestion during peak hours on the busiest routes in the city. Earlier we used to have only a few spots where vehicular movement would hit the snag of jamming. Instead of those spots being attended by the government, new points of horrible traffic jams are surfacing up in the valley, especially in the Srinagar city. There are hardly any chances of driving on the city roads without getting stuck in a traffic jam. Many experts are of the opinion that there is a dire need to construct flyovers, underpasses, express way corridors inorder to solve the problem of traffic routine snarls. Till then traffic department needs to come up with a sustainable mechanism to effectively divert the traffic without much convenience to the public at large. That will help in de-congestion of traffic and ultimately lead to better traffic management on the connected routes. The need of the hour is to evolve a comprehensive strategy to overcome the traffic congestion; the concerned agencies need to look for latest technology as is operational in the road projects in major cities across the country. In summers Srinagar city is host to a large floating population in the form of employees of govt and private offices, school buses, tourists, labourers and others. As such the congestion is inevitable. Factors like this should be taken into account before framing the road network plans. There is also a need for enforcing traffic rules. There are large number of people who drive without having proper license and other mandatory papers. Lack of accountability means any one can buy a vehicle and drive it the very next day. The related traffic rules should be strictly enforced and people desirous to buy a vehicle should be made to pass the necessary driving tests. This will help keep check on the spurt in the number of new vehicles being added to the roads. Besides, wrong-parking should be dealt with iron hand. This will go a long way to avoid formation of gridlocks paving way to smooth traffic regulation.
