Restrictions on Gandhi Setu and absence of alternative routes have turned a ride into Patna from the northern side a test of nerves and a difficult mission.
Whichever direction one looks at, one gets to see only snaking queues of trucks.
The experience for truckers too is nothing less than a nightmare - of remaining stuck in snarls stretching for over 40km from Shahpur (beyond Danapur) to the lifeline bridge via Phulwarisharif and Anisabad.
Trucks coming from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Punjab among other states and headed for the eastern and northern parts of the country remain stuck all along the outer periphery of the city because of the restriction on the movement of trucks on Gandhi Setu, which is under repairs. The absence of alternatives to the dilapidated Setu adds to the woes of big vehicles crossing Ganga.
On Thursday, Patna zonal inspector-general N.H. Khan conducted a meeting with superintendents of police of Patna, Jehanabad, Hajipur and Bhojpur to regulate movement of trucks from Hajipur to Patna for around 45 minutes between 1am and 3am to avoid congestion in the city.
Murshid, a young trucker, normally takes around five days to drive from Pune to Guwahati through Bihar. However, it took him more than 12 hours to cover a distance of around 5km from Danapur to Anisabad on Thursday night.
"I was stuck in this snarl at Naubatpur around 12 midnight and I am still halfway from Gandhi Setu. If I move at this speed, then I would reach by Sunday."
The massive snarls have almost been a continuous affair from mid-May. To allow movement of smaller vehicles, trucks are confined to only one lane on all roads from Shahpur till Gandhi Setu. On Friday afternoon as well, a long queue of trucks was seen from Danapur Cantonment, Khagaul-Danapur road, Phulwarisharif-Anisabad, New Bypass (NH-30) till Gandhi Setu.
A similar tailback is seen every evening on the Patna-Bakhtiyarpur stretch of NH-30, starting from the toll plaza for its newly constructed four-lane stretch up to Zero Mile (around 3km).
Consequently, vehicles coming from places such as Nalanda, Nawada, Begusarai, Barh and Mokama among others are stuck for hours immediately before reaching Zero Mile.
Drivers are the worst affected, as the trucks are held standing for hours. "We don't even get to eat. We cannot leave the truck in the middle of the road and go to the dhabas (roadside eateries) to eat. Moreover, there are hardly any dhaba in the town area," complained Rajan Yadav, a truck driver from Varanasi stuck in the snarl at Anisabad on Friday.
Traffic experts claimed that the perennial snarl at the entry and exit points on the periphery of the city was a result of infrastructure failure.
"The problem of snarls on Gandhi Setu and the connecting roads would not be solved unless the authorities come up with an alternative for the old and crumbling Setu. It takes several days to bring vehicular movement back to normality if there is a complete chock-a-block on the Setu for a few hours. This is primarily because traffic movement is one-way on most of the stretch of the Setu because of repair works going on for close to 10 years now," said Sanjeev Sinha, a faculty at National Institute of Technology (NIT)-Patna and a traffic expert.
Built in 1982, the Setu is being used in limited manner because of ongoing repair work on its western flank, between the 39th and 46th pillars. There are altogether 47 pillars. The need of repairing the bridge was first felt in 1991. Since 2004, over Rs 200cr has already been spent on maintenance of the bridge.
While repair on Gandhi Setu has been the root cause of frequent snarls on all roads connecting the bridge, the ongoing tailback of trucks is being suspected to be the fallout of resumption of sand mining in the state.
Most trucks seen standing on Phulwarisharif-Anisabad road on Friday were carrying sand from Koilwar to Hajipur, Muzaffarpur and other places in north Bihar.
On January 19, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had issued an order, stating that mining, distribution and transportation of minor minerals, including sand, would remain completely prohibited in Bihar till the issuance of environmental clearance for the same.
Later, the State Level Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) and Bihar State Pollution Control Board issued clearances to around 150 ghats by end-April. This led to sudden rise in sand mining and trucks transporting sand from places south to north Bihar and vice-versa.
