Motphran point is considered to be one of the most active junctions in Shillong city with a large number of people and vehicles passing through the junction every minute.
The junction is strategically located near Iewduh, one of the biggest markets in North East India and is also the gateway to several localities like Mawkhar, Jaiaw, Umshohsun and Quallapatty.
Vehicles from every nook and corner of the city and other parts of the State descend at Motphran everyday and at all hours.
Also, the junction is dominated by roadside vendors selling their wares right from the morning till late in the evening.
All these factors have combined to make Motphran one of the busiest and subsequently one of the most difficult junctions to negotiate.
Pedestrians have a tough time finding their way across the junction with vehicles zooming in from every direction. Even the SPTS buses and the maxi taxis are using the junction as their starting point to ferry passengers to other parts of the city.
When one considers the difficulties faced by pedestrians, it is but an obvious choice to have an over bridge or a skywalk over the junction for the pedestrians. A few decades back, the Government constructed the Motphran foot bridge for pedestrians but over the years, the over bridge has been encroached by the second-hand cloth vendors who have set up their stalls along the entire stretch of the over bridge.
Adding to the congestion are the road side shops in and around the junction. Vendors have set up all kinds of stalls from fruit shops to meat and fish stalls around the junction, thereby encroaching into valuable pedestrian space, leaving them high and dry.
The solution, despite being simple, may be tough for the government to incorporate, said a pedestrian who takes the junction to go to Gari Khana.
“The Government should either clear the foot bridge of vendors or construct another footbridge over the junction to help the pedestrians,” he said.
“The Government should include Motphran in the beautification programme which it has initiated at Khyndailad. There has been no development programme by the Government at Motphran in all these years,” another person, a resident of Mission Compound, Jaiaw, said.
Earlier, some NGOs had also questioned the Government move of not including Motphran junction in the beautification programme initiated by the State Urban Affairs Department. (By Aafaque Hussain)
