Huge tourist influx clogs road to Kasauli

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, June 24

The road leading to Kasauli is bursting at the seams with a huge rush of tourists heading for the hills to beat the summer heat of the plains from Delhi, Punjab and Haryana. The traffic situation has worsened after the lockdown was lifted in the plains and the state did away with the RT-PCR test for the visitors.

The Garkhal junction, where five roads converge, has become a major headache for motorists as well as police. A motorist has to cross this junction to reach Kasauli from the Parwanoo-Dharampur national highway.

The narrow single lane road is far too inadequate to handle such a huge volume of traffic as tourists enter from the national highway. The constant movement of VIPs, including Central ministers, adds to the turmoil as policemen face a challenging task to ensure smooth passage of vehicles at this junction.

“The vehicles heading towards Kasauli and returning back are routed through two different roads at Garkhal to avoid traffic bottlenecks. Staff from the police station at Kasauli is deputed at the weekends to channelise traffic at this junction but since all roads are narrow and single lane, handling the huge traffic becomes tough,” said Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), Parwanoo, Yogesh Rolta.

Residents residing along the roads are subject to air and noise pollution because of constant honking by vehicles lined up on all roads. Unsavoury scenes are often witnessed as the desperate tourists sometimes argue with the policemen, who are engaged in manning the traffic smoothly. Policemen deployed rue they were helpless as roads were choked with vehicles.

The district administration has failed to come up with a solution and decongest the roads despite the National Green Tribunal (NGT) directions to do so.

The NGT had directed the state government to devise ways to decongest the Garkhal junctionafter undertaking a study on its carrying capacity in 2017. Its recommendations have, however, failed to yield any result.

Kasauli has seen immense commercialization in the last two decades. Despite manifold increase in the number of hotels and tourists in the Kasauli Planning Area, not even a single road has been widened.

It is surprising why the government has not initiated any move to work out a bypass for Garkhal junction. It is also used by goods trucks from the industrial belt of Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh. Multi-axle trucks often add to the traffic woes due to their huge size.

Despite roads being available to channelise industrial vehicles, the administration was turning a blind eye to this problem which was growing by each passing day.

Commercialisation rises, Infra missing

• Kasauli has seen immense commercialisation in the last two decades. Despite multifold increase in the number of hotels, not even a single road has been widened
• It is surprising why the government has not initiated any move to work out a bypass for the Garkhal junction
• It is also used by goods trucks from the industrial belt of Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh. Multi-axle trucks often add to the traffic woes