Darjeeling, May 24 -- 8 km in 3 hours - this is what has become synonymous with the Queen of the Hills, as serpentine traffic jams take over Darjeeling. Patients, students, office goers, daily commuters as well as the tourists are flocking the hill town. Transport associations have issued a deadline, threatening protest programmes from July, if the administration fails to take positive steps to ease the situation.
"I stay in Ghoom and have to commute to Darjeeling daily. It is taking more than 3 hours to commute 8 km. I have switched over to bicycling. I reach faster now," stated Dawa, a local resident.
Students are missing classes; the condition of patients deteriorates, caught in traffic snarls and not making it on time to the hospital. "It is absolute chaos and can no longer be called traffic jams. They are deadlocks. During tourist season we face hell," added Mamta Chettri, a resident.
"Not much has been done by the Centre, state and local self government to improve the infrastructure of the town. If money would have been spent on developing infrastructure, we would not have to face such problems. We have the same infrastructure that the British left us with. Nothing new has been built since," stated Pasang Sherpa, president, Himalayan Transport Coordination Committee.
"We have given memorandums to the authorities with suggestions. We want the administration and police to conduct a survey and also hold meetings with stakeholders to come up with short and long term plans to sort out this issue. If we see that no steps have been taken by the end of June then we will launch protest programmes from July," added Sherpa. The memorandum states that most of the hotels have no parking facilities and park vehicles on the streets, further aggravating the situation. "The police and administration should enforce that the hotels have parking facilities. The hotels convert parking space into rooms, park on roads and save lakhs of rupees," alleged the transporter.
The memorandum further added that all tourist spots should have parking. " National Highway 55 connecting Siliguri to Darjeeling does not fulfill any criteria of national highway. In places the road is around 7 feet wide and does not permit both side traffic. That too the Railway track runs through the road. There are no designated drop-off points on the road," stated Sherpa. Memorandums have been given to the GTA Chief; MLA Darjeeling and Kurseong; Darjeeling DM and SP.
"The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway tracks have to be brought down to road level at places that are prone to traffic jams. The frequency of Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Joy Rides have to be cut down to 4. When the Joy Rides ply, traffic comes to a standstill," added Pradeep Lama, owner of a travel agency.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.