Welcome to the State’s commercial capital – where vehicles crawl on the city roads for want of any solution to the traffic imbroglio.
Here, the issue is not about making helmets compulsory for two-wheeler riders, but the government’s apathy to resolve the burning traffic, road safety and parking woes plaguing the commercial capital, with successive governments only paying lip service to these issues. Unlike other towns, the commercial capital has no bus stand worth its name.
The ring road project has hit a block and the new dispensation has done nothing to put the project back on the tracks since the last three years.
The city’s traffic junctions have become death traps for want of scientific development. There’s still no relief for motorists and the student community at the Comba level crossing in the absence of a flyover. Illumination of many a city road is still a far cry, contributing to the accident rate. Despite tall talk to shift them to the city outskirts, petrol pumps located in the heart of the city have remained where they are, again for lack of will on the part of the authorities.
There’s still no notification in place notifying the bus stops in the city, leaving unscrupulous bus operators the discretion to make halts as per their whims and fancies.
Margao boasts of having an elaborate network of Closed Circuit TV cameras across the city to curb traffic violators, but sadly, the town Traffic Cell faces an acute manpower shortage to scan the CCTV footage. That Home Guards have been roped in to man the city traffic indicates the manpower constraints plaguing the Margao Traffic Cell.
The less said on parking lots, the better. Margao is blessed by three spacious open spaces at the old bus stand, pick up stand and the old fish market. Citizens have only heard promises by the powers that be to solve the parking problem by building multi-storey parking lots, but in vain.
