Ghaziabad: Tailbacks have become routine on internal roads in Indirapuram, Vaishali and Vasundhara, where encroachments and illegally parked vehicles squeeze traffic into narrow lanes. Residents said traffic police are seldom seen on the ground, allowing bottlenecks to persist during peak hours.The road outside Ramprastha City in Vaishali, the U-turn near St Francis School in Indirapuram and the Makanpur route linking Vaishali and Indirapuram are among the major congestion points. Traffic also piles up on Kaveri Marg near the gurdwara, at the Aditya Mall roundabout and outside Shipra Mall, Habitat Centre and Windsor Market.Illegal parking is a major contributor to the problem, with vehicles routinely left along roads despite designated parking spaces. “Around Aditya Mall, people simply leave their vehicles along the road rather than keeping them in the parking space inside,” said resident Shubham Singh. He added that the carriageway was already in poor condition following repair work under the CM-GRIDs project.A Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) survey conducted by the Central Road Research Institute in July 2018 found that illegal parking at various locations occupied road space equivalent to 450 cars at any given time. Parking outside SRS Cinemas accounted for 287 car spaces, while CISF Road lost space equivalent to 128 cars.The pressure on roads has grown alongside the area’s population and commercial expansion. Developed largely as residential townships from the 1990s to the early 2000s, the trans-Hindon areas have emerged as densely populated hubs for the city’s corporate and service-sector workforce. Their proximity to NH9 and the Delhi-Meerut Expressway has fuelled further growth, while the existing road network struggles to accommodate the rising number of private vehicles.Deepak Kumar, president of Federation AOA and a resident of Amrapali Village in Indirapuram, said the area’s infrastructure had not kept pace with its growth.“When Indirapuram was developed, its civic infrastructure was planned according to the needs of that time. But today, the population has grown and shops and commercial establishments have expanded rapidly too. As a result, encroachment is now widespread, and there is hardly any space left on the roads for people,” he said.Encroachments and illegal parking are compounded by wrong-side driving and unregulated passenger pick-ups, residents said. Alok Kumar, a resident, said people visiting malls often park on the roadside. He recalled that cranes earlier towed away vehicles parked along roads.“Traffic cops are a rare sight in the area too and they appear only when the snarls turn into jams,” he said.Priti Singh, who commutes along Dharam Marg, said a 100–150-metre stretch in front of the Sector 4 market becomes particularly difficult to navigate during the evening rush.“The stretch is always choked because of haphazard parking and e-rickshaws dropping off passengers in the middle of the road, leaving vehicles with a single lane to move in,” she said.The traffic police said personnel and enforcement measures had been deployed to tackle congestion. ADCP (Traffic) Varun Singh said 261 traffic police personnel, including two ACPs, three inspectors, 31 sub-inspectors, 103 head constables and 122 constables, had been deployed across trans-Hindon. Four traffic marshals were also on duty.“We have two cranes dedicated to the Indirapuram area. In Sept, a total of 158 cars were towed by both cranes in the area,” he said.The ADCP added that 3,458 challans were issued in the area last month for traffic violations. Under the ‘Do Gaz Peechhe’ anti-encroachment campaign, encroachments were removed from 60 locations, and action was taken against 135 people under Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).
