Srinagar’s dead traffic lights are a small symbol of a large failure: a city that spent on hardware and forgot to govern it.
Drive through any major crossing in Srinagar today and the picture is the same. The traffic signal stands tall, newly painted, often solar powered, and dark. At Jehangir Chowk, Dalgate, Rambagh, Hyderpora and a dozen other junctions, commuters are left to the judgment of a lone traffic policeman waving his arms against a wall of honking cars. Where the lights do work, nobody trusts them. Drivers jump the red, pedestrians cross on the green, and the signal becomes a decoration rather than an instruction.
This was not supposed to happen. The Smart City project promised intelligent traffic lights, cameras and a control room that would manage the city’s flow from a single screen. Crores were spent. Press releases were issued. Yet within a few years the system has slipped into the familiar pattern of installation without maintenance. A signal that fails is not repaired for weeks. A camera that stops working is not noticed. The control room exists, but the streets show no sign of it.
The police response has been to say that signals alone cannot manage traffic. That is true, but it is also an admission. Signals cannot work if they are not kept working, and no amount of manpower can replace a system that a city of this size needs. Srinagar has more vehicles than its roads were ever built to carry. Every day the number grows, while the width of Residency Road and the bridges over the Jhelum stays the same. Encroachments eat the footpaths, roadside parking eats the carriageway, and the traffic police are left to manage what planners failed to plan.
The cost is paid by ordinary people. A journey of fifteen minutes takes an hour. Ambulances get stuck. Schoolchildren spend their mornings in fumes. Shopkeepers lose customers who cannot find a place to stop. Nobody in the administration seems to count this cost, because nobody is held responsible for it.
Responsibility is the missing piece. The Smart City company blames the contractor. The contractor blames the power supply. The traffic police blame the public. The Srinagar Municipal Corporation blames everyone else. In this circle of excuses, the lights stay off.
The fix is not complicated. Every signal in the city should have a named officer responsible for its working, with a public helpline for complaints and a deadline for repairs. The control room should publish how many signals are functional each week. Defunct cameras should be restored, and challans should follow for those who ignore the lights, starting with government vehicles. Parking must be moved off the main roads, and footpaths returned to pedestrians.
A traffic light is the simplest promise a government makes to its citizens: stop here, go there, and you will be safe. When even that promise is broken, people stop believing in larger ones. Srinagar deserves better than signals of neglect.
