People suffer as slip roads turn into parking lots...

Nikhila Pant Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, February 23

Residents and shopkeepers on the Bathinda-Barnala road are facing problems these days not only because of the chaos created by road widening that’s going on but also due to the slip roads that are now being used as parking lots by people visiting hotels and retail outlets located there. 

Ever since the road widening project was undertaken by the state government, crossing the Bathinda-Barnala stretch turned into a Herculean task for the commuters. 

Since several U-turns have been covered under the project, commuters turning towards the residential areas have to take the slip roads that have virtually turned into parking lots. 

The slips roads located outside Best Western Stella, Hotel Sapphire, Reliance Mart and Azad Nagar are blocked by haphazard parking of vehicles throughout the day. 

Although the slip roads are wide enough to let two vehicles pass at the same time, a car barely manages to make its way these days. 

Som Sharma, a resident of Prajapat Colony, said, “Since construction is going on at Rose Garden Chowk, a large number of vehicles going towards Barnala from the city have started making their way through these colonies and take the slip road to take the U-turn to reach the main road. Automobile repair shops along the slip roads have taken the liberty to park the repaired or broken down vehicles on the 

slip roads, thereby creating bottlenecks for the traffic.”

Another resident Shiv Kumar said, “Anyone driving from inside the residential area towards the slip road has several tasks at hand. Apart from accelerating the vehicle to cross the slopes, one has to maneuver the vehicle to save it from hitting the vehicles parked on the slip road and also save it from hitting the vehicles coming from the other side. Instead of aiding traffic movement, slip roads are turning into a nuisance,” he said. 

The two leading hotels located on the either side of the road are commonly used by families to host functions.

“If there is a function at any of these two hotels, instead of parking their vehicles in the parking lots of these hotels, the guests prefer to use the slip roads to make it convenient for them as they leave. This adds to traffic chaos. It must be made mandatory for all to park their vehicles in the parking lot and in case the parking lot is small to accommodate the vehicles, the hotels must rent extra space instead of causing trouble to the public,” said Inderjit Kaur, a resident of Guru Gobind Singh Nagar. 

Same is the case with the slip road outside Reliance Mart. Despite the fact that the place has a huge parking lot, several vehicles can be spotted parked on the slip road outside the building while the traffic police personnel choose to look the other way, a resident said. 

A traffic police official, on condition of anonymity, said there was a provision to issue challans to wrongly parked vehicles and also to tow them away but the traffic police paid more attention to wrongly parked vehicles at crowded market areas and roads of the city.