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| Speed breakers on BB Road hampering traffic flow |
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Rawalpindi
It has been over two months now that the speed breakers near Gulshan Dadan Khan on both sides of city’s busiest Benazir Bhutto Road sprung up for no apparent reason.
The only plausible reason for installing these road humps, one can think of, is probably to create more inconvenience for the road users by the city fathers.
The recent addition of speed breakers on Benazir Bhutto Road, which most of the day and even at night remains choked with long traffic queues has added yet another bottleneck.
So bad is their placement that it often results in accidents and traffic jams during peak hours, which sometimes stretch for up to a kilometre.
It was reported in the press that a “very influential” local person who owns a plaza in front of these speed breakers got them installed. These speed breakers are called ‘Kamani breakers’ by the motorists due to their odd shape contrary to Cat eyes or other systematic jumps on the roads. There are no traffic signs or boards at these jumps to guide the motorists who are taken all of a sudden on reaching these jumps on both sides of the busy road. There are jumps and humps also nearest to these near Pind Dadan Khan U turn and Shamsabad Chowk. And the recently installed humps add to the miseries of the vehicle users who on reaching these after enjoying a jump to vehicle think about their validity.
These humps only add to disruption in traffic and nothing else. These humps were installed in the pretext of a mosque there. But this years old mosque is opposite to this plaza on other side of the road where worshippers of its side offer prayers.
The Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA), which is responsible for the maintenance of the road, however, say they did not install these speed breakers.
“We are not responsible for them. It is the work of TMA,” an RDA official, requesting anonymity stated. When TMA (Tehsil Municipal Administration) was asked, their official said they mainly look after cleanliness of the city and installing speed breakers was simply out of their domain.
The shifting of responsibility by one department to the other, shows that RDA is trying to ‘cover up’ an issue due to which thousands of commuters suffer daily.
A low ranking official of the RDA said that in a meeting about three months ago a “very influential person” prevailed upon the RDA bosses to install these speed breakers within a day-night.
“The very next day of the meeting, the RDA men put up those speed breakers,” the official said.
Whatever the case may be, in the absence of “equal law for all’ the general public has been made to suffer to satisfy the ego a so-called privileged or influential person.
Ask anyone travelling on Murree Road and he will curse the speed breakers, which have considerably increased the travelling time on Rawalpindi’s busiest artery.
“I fail to understand their purpose. It only slows down the traffic for no reason,” remarked Zahid Ali who travels daily on the road on his way to office in Islamabad.
A number of other people who frequently travel on Benazir Bhutto Road expressed similar views saying these should be immediately removed, as they are more of a traffic hazard than anything else.
A few days ago at night, a newcomer to the city travelling at a fairly high speed rammed his car into the rear of a car in front of him, which had slowed down because of speed breaker. It badly damaged the two vehicles and held up the traffic for a considerable time.
The road users have urged the authorities to take immediate action to remove these speed breakers.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
