Hyderabad: GHMC's apathy leads to severe traffic snarls

Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation's apathy is leading to severe traffic snarls across the city. The civic body, prior to embarking on its Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP), had decided to improve 111 junctions under the Urban Junction Improvement Plan to ease traffic jams.  

Plans were drawn up keeping in view the increasing traffic over the next five to seven years till the time the skyways are completed. The corporation even finalised 30 junctions to be taken up in Phase-I.

Two years have passed since then and even though commuters across the city are facing severe traffic snarls, the corporation has not managed to improve even five junctions.

According to highly placed sources in the corporation, the civic body was to improve 111 junctions in July 2016 keeping in view future traffic requirements. After several brainstorming sessions and taking several opinions into consideration, the corporation decided to improve 30 critical junctions in the first phase and the remaining in the next two phases.

Junctions in the first and second phases would be improved at a preliminary cost of Rs 10 crore and the third phase at Rs 22 crore. The objective of the plan was to reduce the journey time during the construction of skyways, under passes and grade separators, facilitation of free left, improving pedestrian facilities and other road safety infrastructure.

The junction improvements would also include increasing the width of the carriageway, improvement of free lefts by providing left turn channelisers, and road markings and sign boards for improved traffic movement. 

According to sources, the junction improvement was to be completed by December 2017. Yet at the end of 2018, only five junctions have been partly improved, such as VST and Sangeet junctions, while every nook and corner of the city has been facing severe traffic snarls during peak hours, especially in the in IT corridors, LB Nagar Junction, Paradise, Kukatpally, Suchitra, Ramanthapur and Balanagar junction.

A senior GHMC official told this newspaper on condition of anonymity that multiple factors have contributed to the delay of the junction improvement plan. He said that the staff crunch is one of the key issues as several of them were deputed to supervise the SRDP. The corp. itself has partly developed a few junctions since there were no takers for the project. He said that it would not finalise tenders as of now and citizens will have to bear the inconvenience till January 2019 from when work will begin.