Cops face flak for poor traffic management in Vijayawada

Vijayawada: As the flyover construction struggles interminably towards completion, the traffic jams on an hourly basis in the city, have been worrying citizens. The capital city is suffering from a lack of coordination in 8 departments.

These are: the city civic administration, CRDA, R &B, Panchayati Raj, irrigation, NHAI, Amravati Metro and police departments, all of which have ignored road management in their respective ambits.

The CRDA, which has a depth of technical and engineering expertise in transport management, is busy attending to the needs of the capital’s designs.

The Ramavarappadu Ring-Benz Circle stretch has become a nightmare for  vehicular traffic, as the VMC, CRDA and other departments concerned are simply sitting idly on the by-pass formula. The three areas connecting the capital city to the Telangana districts have been completely detached from the city, for the last four days.

School-going children, employees in private and public sectors and daily wage labourers from Kummaripalem, Bhava-nipuram and Vidyadha-rapuram are forced to walk from Ravi Chettucentre to Ratham centre, to catch a city bus or autorickshaw, to reach their destinations.

The unending works at Kanaka Durga flyover have been causing these hardships, which are likely to go on till 2018 March.

“Even RTC buses coming from the direction of Hyderabad and other Telangana districts, have to wait for the instructions of the traffic police,” said an RTC driver of Amaravati class, from Hyderabad to Vijayawada.

It may be recalled that the Chief Minister had assured earlier that the four-lane roads under the flyover, would be completed by the Krishna Pushkarams of last year.

“It’s been almost 20 months, since the flyover construction started,” said Bachhu Narayana Rao, a resident of Sitara junction, amazed at the government for not even allowing two-wheelers on these roads connecting  Ratham centre from Gollapudi and Ibrahimpatnam direction.

In fact, the flyover construction is confined to two-and-a-half kilometres distance, and it is aimed at clearing the bottleneck on the Hyderabad-Kolkata highway. SOMA Constructions was given the contract, but till now their performance has not been impressive.

The Union Minister, Mr Gadkari laid the foundation for these works in December 2015. The State government is not in a position to bring in funds from the Union government, with only 58 per cent of the works completed so far.

Following the delay in the payment of bills, SOMA Constructions has also been delaying the works, following which the road has been closed for 20 months. This is causing inconvenience to the residents of five divisions under VMC limits.

While the traffic hazards are increasing day by day, the half kilometre distance has been enhanced to five kilometres to allow vehicular traffic to enter the city.

This is again causing traffic jams at Road under Caves (RuC) and also at Chanumolu Venkata Rao (CVR) flyover.