The right of way
Have you been to Police Bazar on a weekend? And did you manage to avoid bumping onto fellow pedestrians, vehicles, street vendors and their goods? If your answer to these two questions is a yes, then you are a person with luck. You might as well buy a lottery ticket and chances are you will win the prize.
The thoroughfare at Police Bazar is a tricky one to negotiate. Thankfully, Shillongites are good people. If you mistakenly bump into someone, they understand your predicament. But the drivers are a different breed of people. You have to have Ninja like skills to escape coming under their wheels.
When the Police Bazar beautification project was undertaken, the thoroughfare was supposed to be a pedestrian zone. However, by the look of it, the thoroughfare has been overrun by hawkers and the remaining space has been taken over by vehicles. Where do the pedestrians go then?
It is laughable at best to think that someone actually came up with the brilliant idea of allowing vehicles to pass through a heavily-congested area to reduce traffic jam. The idea defies logic and the order should be scrapped without wasting any time.
We end this piece with a question to our readers and to that “brilliant mind” which came up with this dangerous idea: Who has the right of way to the PB thoroughfare? Is it the hawkers or is it the vehicle owners or is it the pedestrians.
The SJ team hopes that someone from the district administration or the Urban Affairs department or the traffic branch would respond to our query above.
