Rush hour gridlocks, haphazard parking of vehicles on the roadsides, ever-increasing levels of hazardous air pollution and traffic bottlenecks. All this and more are a mundane sight for any commuter, who struggles to make way through the roads of Chandigarh, a city that spreads over an area of 114 sq kms.

The planned city of Chandigarh, which came into existence nearly five decades back, today faces a challenge to deal with the burgeoning vehicular population that has a widespread impact on health and quality of life here.

Over the past few years, the number of vehicles has escalated considerably in Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana. More than one million vehicles are registered in the city, having population of nearly 11 lakh residents. Chandigarh’s vehicle ownership has witnessed more than 1000-fold increase from 940 vehicles in 1967 to nearly 10.5 lakhs in 2014.

What was once a 15 minutes commute from city centre Sector 17 to any other sector, can now take as long as 40 minutes.

According to the Chandigarh’s Registering and Licensing Authority (RLA), 200 (approx) vehicles are registered in the city everyday. The numbers of four wheelers are nearing 5 lakhs while the number of two wheelers in the city is already more than 5 lakhs.

In the past few years, more than 45000 vehicles were registered annually. A total of 45113 vehicles were registered in the year 2013, 51259 in 2012, 48755 in 2011 and 50460 in the year 2010, informs Chandigarh’s Registering and Licensing officer, Praveen Kumar.

Also, after accounting for lakhs of commuters entering Chandigarh every day from neighboring states, the planned city today faces the problems that the carefully designed original plan, made five decades ago, was meant to avoid.

A large number of residents in Chandigarh commute to work alone and very few carpool with another passenger.

The dirtiest part of the day for the commuters is often rush hour traffic when they have sit in a string of cars and buses. According to the UT Traffic Police, traffic is bursting at its seams at all the main roads between 8.30 am and 11.30 am, 1.30 pm and 2.45 pm and 5 pm and 7.45 pm in Chandigarh.

Bearing the brunt of poor public transport, the people of Chandigarh are increasingly dependent on personal vehicles. Surprisingly, the plans of higher authorities to ply more buses on several routes and roping in private sector to run buses, bringing in multi-crore metro project, BRT system (Bus Rapid Transit) to ease traffic congestion have run into numerous snags and are yet to become a reality.

As a result, traffic bursting at its seams, parking woes, escalating accidents’ figures and rising pollution levels has today become a greatest dilemma for policymakers with city running short of space to accommodate the burgeoning number of vehicles hitting the roads each day

In car-choked Chandigarh, the exhaust from vehicles is also responsible for most of city’s air pollution problem. As the smell of engine exhaust has become a part of everyday life for city residents during traffic snarls, the respiratory diseases are also aggravating in the denizens.

As per the observations of Chandigarh Pollution Control Committee (CPCC), Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) and Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter (RSPM) exceeds its permissible limit at primary locations including city’s heart Sector 17 here.

Besides, traveling on the streets of Chandigarh has become unsafe with accident rates having gone up. Notwithstanding, its wide roads and planned infrastructure, the city loses more than 100 people to road accidents every year.

A total of 410 accidents killed 117 people in 2013 while 136 people had died in 419 accidents reported in the previous year 2012 here. While pedestrian deaths were 34.18 percent in 2013, it was 32.35 percent of the total accidents in 2012. And, more than 40 percent of the victims were aged between 15 and 40 years, as per the record of UT Traffic Police.

Even as the authorities concerned have called for more aggressive road safety campaigns in the past, the situation is no different in 2014 with more than 150 road accidents already reported in the city till May.

The increasing pollution levels and rising number of road accidents are worrisome but the startling figures only begin to tell the tale of worsening state of affairs in the union territory of Chandigarh, the city having highest per-capita car ownership.

With nearly 200 vehicles added to Chandigarh each day, the parking woes are also compounding by the day. The haphazard parked vehicles along the roadsides in residential and commercial areas pose a serious threat to others drivers here.

Chandigarh is battling the problem of plenty with increased motorization.

While Chandigarh’s motorization has been a boon for automakers and economy, the UT Administration has failed to step up its effort to adopt a comprehensive approach to deal with the problems it has created.

A number of studies have been attempted by the UT Administration to address the issue but, seemingly to no avail. In the series of studies of UT Administration includes the study of transport model of France, feasibility of underpasses, BRT corridor and underground parkings at major locations among others.

Apart from this, regulatory methods like limit per household vehicles number, congestion tax, promotion of green vehicles, no-vehicle zones and higher parking fee, to restrict private vehicle use here were deliberated upon by the UT Administration. However, there has been no indication when or if these proposals will ever see the light of day.

UT Home Secretary Anil Kumar says, “Efforts are being made to control traffic congestion in Chandigarh. The work for projects like metro and underpasses are already in progress.”

“As far as containing the number of vehicular population is concerned, discussions are going on to take a policy decision in this regard,” says he.

The State of Environment Report-Chandigarh released last year had also observed that the increasing number of vehicles here are a grave threat to green city of Chandigarh.

Like other urban cities, Chandigarh waits for solutions to curb the traffic snarls, coupled with other problems. It is clear, however, that the efforts made so far by the higher authorities are not enough to curb the traffic woes, as their initiatives have gone in vain till now.

Apparently, with city’s population continuing to grow rapidly and little being done by the authorities concerned to improve public transport and control increased motorisation, gridlock on roads is likely to get worsen in the foreseeable future.