By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Sep 23: The State Planning Board has woken up to the burgeoning traffic woes in Shillong, but doesn’t have any ready solution.
Chairman of the Board Metbah Lyngdoh has no quick fix up his sleeves.
As one possible way to ushering in more orderly traffic flow, he believes in increasing traffic police manpower from 150 at present to about 550 with the involvement of 400 Home Guard personnel.
No, he doesn’t consider odd-even system as a viable solution.
He said the traffic arrangement for Shillong has become obsolete since the plans were put into motion a long time back when the capital city had only 2 or 3 police stations.
He admitted that the state government has started to focus on decongesting Shillong by relocating important government establishments to New Shillong Township, but the project will take time to complete and, in the interim, immediate measures need to be adopted to reduce traffic congestion.
He said the government’s initiative of introducing STEMS buses have somehow helped in easing traffic snarls during school hours.
In the absence of a fool-proof system, Lyngdoh on Monday held a meeting with various departments and sought detailed presentations from them on how to ease the traffic congestion.
Officials from Urban Affairs, PWD, Transport and Home attended the meeting.
The Planning Board will hold consultations with these departments next week, go through the presentations and prepare a set of suggestions for the government, Lyngdoh said.
He also made it clear that the mandate of the Planning Board is to recommend suggestions and taking a call on those suggestions is the prerogative of the government.