Commuters complain of ‘terrible’ U-turns

CDA and Islamabad Traffic Police both blame each other for U-turns.

ISLAMABAD: Residents have termed U-turn on the roads of Islamabad as “terrible” and “hard to manage”. The Capital Development Authority (CDA) and the Islamabad Traffic Police (ITP) both blame each other for the U-turns and neither have displayed any intent to solve the problem.

“I find it challenging and risky to take the U-turn near the Zero-point interchange,” Khalid Raja, a young professional, told The Express Tribune. He complained that especially during peak hours the flow of traffic was so ‘overwhelming’ that taking the U-was a challenge.

“The placement of these U-turns makes no sense and it seems as if they were made without any proper planning,” he said. The scarcity and placing of these turns was also questioned.

“If I miss the U-turn in front of the CDA Headquarters, I have to go all the way down the road and come back which is extremely time is consuming,” Azeem Chaudhry, an employee at a CNG station near the Diplomatic enclave, said.

Zaheer Ahmed, another motorist, claimed that the U-turns on Peshawar More, Faisal Avenue, Khana Pul and 9th and 7th Avenues were “too sharp” and “difficult to use”.

Kamran Khawaja, a resident of G-11, said that lack of U-turns was causing motorists to cover additional, unnecessary distances which were unaffordable given the rising price of fuel.

Nazia Hamid a receptionist at a local hotel in Blue Area said that taxi drivers were also charging higher fares because fuel costs and distances had increased.

Meanwhile, ITP claimed they were not responsible for these U-turns and had only made the ones in Blue Area. Waseem Arif, spokesperson of ITP said, “The U-turns in the Blue Area were made to regulate traffic and decrease the number of accidents.” He claimed that all U-turns in Blue Area were made by proper traffic engineers and were properly planed.

“The rest of the capital’s U-turns have been made by CDA,” he said. However, Ramzan Sajjid, Spokesman of CDA, said that CDA was only responsible for making a few temporary U-turns where development work was taking place. “I cannot give an accurate estimation of how may temporary U-turns have been made,” Sajjid said.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 22^nd, 2010.