Frequent traffic snarls outside Amritsar bus stand add to commuters’ woes

Failure to manage traffic on the stretch of the GT road outside the Shaheed Madan Lal Dhingra Inter-State Bus Terminal (ISBT) leads to massive traffic jams every day causing hardships to commuters.

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Manpreet Singh, a shopkeeper near the bus stand, said, “The authorities concerned should take steps to prevent frequent traffic jams in the morning and evening hours outside bus stand. Serpentine queues of vehicles can be witnessed outside the bus stand. The situation aggravates when heavy vehicle drivers use pressure horns. Besides, smoke emanating from vehicles pollutes environment. Besides, hot weather conditions makes commuting difficult.”

“Instead of lush green landscape which should greet devotees coming out of the ISBT, they face traffic nightmares. Since the Golden Temple is easily accessible from the ISBT, a large number of devotees in Punjab prefer to come to the holy city via buses,” he said.

He demanded that the management of the holiest Sikh shrine should spare a thought to make the stretch outside bus stand neat and clean and create a green cover for visitors who deboard buses after covering a tiresome journey.

Besides pressure horns, loud blast sound emanating from modified silencers of two-wheelers, jarring noise of auto-rickshaws and other obsolete vehicles cause noise pollution and nuisance on the road.

Pressure horns are rampantly used by drivers of speeding vehicles like buses, cars and even two-wheelers to create panic among fellow commuters to clear their own path. Despite the fact that all these are in violation of the Motor Vehicles Act, the traffic police do not take stern action against violators.

Compounding problems are sand-laden open vehicles. Sand from these vehicles flies around which creates dust pollution. One must say that there is no end to woes of commuters who use the road outside bus stand every day, while the authorities look the other way.