If you are planning to visit Manali on a Tuesday, be prepared to face one of the worst traffic jams of the world. Here you would not be able to see the highway as vehicles on highways totally paused like they are parked.
Rohtang pass and other snow points being closed as per the direction of border roads organization, the entire traffic is redirected to the town every Tuesday. Except for the main Kullu-Manali and Manali-Solang highway, road links to all other tourist spots of the hill town are one way. District police, however, have deployed traffic police at every nook and corner but they are helpless to control the flood of nationwide vehicles. The arbitrary parking is another reason behind jams.
Manali is facing acute shortage of ample parking space for past two decades. Not only the town, but the problem is same at Old Manali, Hadimba Temple, Vashisht, Manikaran, Naggar, Solang Valley and all popular tourist places. Surprisingly, all parking of Manali town have capacity to accommodate maximum of 900 light vehicles and 250 heavy vehicles while more than 3,000 vehicles are entering the town everyday from outside states besides thousands of local vehicles.
“This is for the first time that the local sightseeing tour took 10 hours which usually takes only 3 hours. Vehicles were frozen on the highways,” a local taxi driver Pritam Chand said. He attributed jams to the ‘no traffic day’ on Rohtang highway.
Manali DSP (traffic) B Rathore said more than 5,000 vehicles are visiting the tourist spots everyday but police were doing their best to maintain the traffic flow. “Congested roads are the main problem behind traffic jams. Narrow roads are causing hour-long jams but we are making strategy to deal with the problem,” he added.
Comments