The news item ‘Traffic-jam, a new normal near Daga Hospital’ (Cityline dated 02.11.26) outlines the newly created traffic issues and messes owing to quite a few, newly built flyovers, apparently visible commonly to us. On many of the hitherto broad roads with seamless traffic movements, new flyovers with ill-designed landings/ downramps have narrowed carriageways of old roads. The sudden width constrictions on old roads without proper signboards, due to such defectively-designed landings and drastic reductions in road widths show disregard for smooth traffic movements, poor traffic and road engineering by all the concerned planners, Government departments and the agencies involved. At some locations, including the surface road below the Indora-Dighori flyover, two-way traffic movements are allowed on their drastically-reduced road widths.

 

These create traffic bottlenecks for all stakeholders and are design-defect induced. The Dr Shrikant Jichkar Flyover landing, near the MH 31 RTO/Giripeth Post Office has created narrow lanes on the surface, rather than roads on either sides of the down-ramp towards the Bole Petrol Pump square. A car and a scooter alongside can barely pass through but vehicles, especially two-wheelers, suddenly emerge on the narrow lanes, driven from the wrong side, throwing surprises. The erstwhile road, once a National Highway, has now become a lane, opp Giripeth post office with glaringly low, road-width. There are no on-the-spot new CCTV cameras fitted to detect the erring, wrong side moving vehicles, driven by traffic rule violators on such spots. I am sure that my close friend, Gyanyogi Dr Jichkar, who frequently drove on this road, would have not been amused by this flyover named after him, that is creating traffic safety issues and traffic messes. He was a visionary par excellence.

 

With the ‘proud addition of 5,200 new vehicles on Dussehra Day 2026,’ are these the bottlenecks the new vehicles will face and/or rather compound to leave their imprints? We are adding thousands of new vehicles every month but the poor traffic planning and road engineering does not commensurate with the huge number of newbies added. The planners obviously have no foresight and are not seeing anything beyond their own noses. Are these flyover created, slip-shod and irreversible traffic messes we are creating for our younger generations to tackle? Road designing and traffic engineering have truly taken the backseat and it’s the planners with a total lack of knowledge and in-depth understanding of both subjects, who occupy front seats to Nagpur city’s bane.