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Traffic police to tame pvt bus operators Thursday, November 29, 2001

SOURCE - TIMES NEWS NETWORK
AHMEDABAD: With private bus operators being banned from operating on Ashram Road in the Paldi area, traffic problems are likely to ease during the day, particularly during the morning rush morning hours.

Deputy Commissioner (Traffic) Samiullah Ansari has issued strict instructions to his en to disallow private bus operators from parking or picking up passengers anywhere on Ashram Road or around the ST bus depot at Geeta Mandir.

With 110 travel agencies, 360 bus owners and an average of 1,600 private buses plying in and out of Ahmedabad every day, the move is expected to smoothen the traffic.

The instruction comes into force after the five-day grace period given to the operators for making alternate arrangements expired on Monday. The grace period was allowed after the operators apprised the DCP of their difficulties.

"While a large number of bus operators had turned the road into a permanent parking slot, inter-city passenger buses kept on waiting for hours along the narrow stretch of the road, affecting the traffic movement," explained Ansari.

According to sources, the GSRTC management, in an October letter to transport minister Narayan Patel, had sought enforcement of an existing notification, which bars private vehicles from utilising the ST premises. In Ahmedabad, private buses are not allowed within a 500-metre radius of the ST depot.

Sources revealed that at a meeting attended by home minister Zadaphiya, police commissioner P C Pande and the traffic advisory committee members, GSRTC chairman Kamlesh Patel had lashed out at the police, accusing the force of failing to implement the notification and allowing in the private bus operators, by allegedly obtaining 'haftas' to the tune of Rs 24 lakh.

The drive, according to Ansari, is to get the private buses to operate in an organised fashion.

Subsequent to the traffic department issuing the notification, the bus owners had met Mayor Himmatsinh Patel to get the municipal corporation to arrange for an alternate parking spot.

Patel, however, communicated to the police that the arrangement required time. The latter, however, are in no mood to delay enforcing the notification. "That not our problem," adds Ansari.

News Source : The Times of India [India's best Newspaper]

 

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