Dysfunctional traffic lights leave residents harried

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 21

Dysfunctional traffic lights at many chowks, especially at Ravidass Chowk and Link Road crossing, near Municipal Corporation Jalandhar (MCJ), at Urban Estate, Phase II, crossing, Workshop Chowk, Guru Nanak Mission Chowk and near PIMS have been causing inconvenience to commuters.

A traffic police personnel, pleading anonymity, said: “There are many signals in the city, the timings of which need to be reset. At times due to lack of power supply and unscheduled power cuts, the traffic signals stop working as they receive power from the nearby feeder or transformer.”

“Although we try to manage the traffic flow, but without traffic lights it becomes a hard task especially when it’s raining”, he added.

Manoj, a shopkeeper at the Ravidass Chowk said: “The traffic lights installed here work for two days, while rest of the days its lying non-functional. The Nakodar Road Welfare Association has already complained about it, the copies of which are with the MCJ, but noting has been initiated in this regard.”

He said as it rained heavily last two days the water was stranded on the road. Due to the defunct traffic lights there were long queues of vehicles. Vehicles were stranded nearly for hours and there was no traffic police personnel to control the congestion.

Another commuter, Kartik Sharma said: “Poor roads, sewerage problems, dysfunctional traffic signal is nothing new rather an everyday story. It becomes difficult to move my vehicles when there is utter chaos with vehicles coming from all directions.”

Ashwani Kumar, Addl DCP (Traffic) said the Traffic Police Department already had held a meeting with Deputy Commissioner and Commissioner of Police in this regard and written to the MCJ about the dysfunctional traffic signals at many places. The MCJ has assured to get it checked and repaired it at the earliest.