The boggling problem of traffic jams that a general city dweller goes through in a daily scale has disgusted me to the core. This has been a part of daily routine of both the pedestrians and those who travel in public vehicles. Making the condition worst is the massive flow of motor vehicles during the peak work hours which has earned itself a name as “office time”. People representing every walks of life have been struggling with this congested traffic problem regardless of whatever profession they follow. Young children travelling daily in their school buses, college students hanging in the jam-packed public buses, employees stuffed inside the nearly-bursting micro buses all have the same complain and that is the growing traffic congestions.

The growing fatigue and other health related issues due to long queues in traffic jams have been one of the major complains of the Kathmandu dwellers these days. People are compelled to travel for more than 2 hours for a short route which would normally take them half-an-hour if the roads have been free. When the entire world is pacing ahead with the tick of clock, we have been compelled to kill our time browsing facebook and listening to music to get away from the boredom of traffic jams. There is an undeniable significance of even a millisecond in athletics, nevertheless we spend considerable amount of our valuable time waiting in the long traffic jams hoping it to subside clearing the way. One famous quotation reads, “Every moment is precious to those who know the value of time”. This adage seems and sounds to be false in our context as it’s not possible in any sense to value time by someone who is bound to waste many hours in traffic jams.

Like any other girl, I also want to hang out with my friends and go movie with them. But it’s this relentless traffic jams of Kathmandu that I have been forced to miss many such movies where my friends have invited me in person and hundreds of rupees have been already spent for the ticket. Reprimands from the friends for being late to the invited places, rebukes from the parents for reaching the home later than the expected time, scolding from the boss for delay at office, all have started to be seemed like the normal phenomena in my contemporary life. More and more people are resorting to using the public vehicles to skip all these hassles which is turning the situation from bad to worst.

The stories shared by the co-passengers are quite a frustrating one. One is expected to listen all these stories when s/he is caught with other hapless creatures in a long traffic jams. Some students lament that they have not been able to attend their schools and colleges in time and not even been able to appear in the major examinations due to the traffic congestions. Some job aspirants share stories of not being able to appear in the interviews due to the same reason. More critical is the stories of patients who aren’t being able to reach hospitals due to the crowded vehicles.
This is the story of every you and me; all the common people who don’t have wealth and power like all those influential people.

Nevertheless, those people who ply on the roads with a tag of VIP with special security arrangement hardly face this problem as the public transport is forcefully brought into standstill to allow these VIPs to pass by without any hassles. The transportation system of our city in addition doesn’t seem to have taken into account the actual need of people. It is so perplexing that most of the additional vehicles are concentrating only inside and around the ring road area however most of the needy nooks and corners are still waiting the expansion of adequate vehicles and regular bus services.

An official data of fiscal year 2013-14 shows the registration of 1.76 million of vehicles and shows the average annual growth rate of 15 % vehicles for the last 12 years in our city. According to another estimate, we are expected to have 14 million vehicles by 2030. It’s quite clear now that the growing problem of traffic congestion is the overcrowded private and public vehicles in our city. It’s now the high time to work for the collective measures to curve these carbon emitting vehicles with proper planning to handle any future challenges. Road expansions and scientific management of transportation system have also to be taken into consideration if we have envisioned a better city.