PONDA: The traffic police inspector, Ponda, Mr Salim Shaikh on Friday wrote to the superintendent of police (SP), traffic, highlighting the need for a new bridge at Khandepar, Usgao to ease the traffic congestion.

The existing bridge, which was built during Portuguese regime, is very narrow and that two vehicles cannot cross over at a time and therefore a lot of traffic congestion occurs, besides the delays to the office goers and others.

"This bridge cannot cater to the present vehicular traffic, as there is tremendous increase in vehicular traffic. Presently, Khandepar bridge is being used for the movement of all types of vehicles. Moreover, this bridge being on the national highway is narrow, only one heavy vehicle can pass at a time," Mr Shaikh wrote.

He informed the SP that installation of electric signal at Khandepar bridge, which links north Goa to Karnataka state areas, is also important as it would help reduce accidents on the bridge. "In the past several accidents occurred on the bridge including the fatal ones. With the increase in vehicular traffic, traffic congestions are caused and it is aggravated when there is a break down of a heavy vehicle on the bridge," he added.

What has added to the woes of the locals is that all the mining trucks use this bridge, besides the several company buses to ferry their staff and perhaps this compelled the PI, Mr Shaikh to write to the seniors.

Some locals, when asked, told this daily that the approach road to the bridge is very narrow and is under capacity to take the load of the vehicles. They also said that people lack traffic sense and discipline. "Everybody wants to move ahead of one another and that’s how the traffic congestion occurs. If they had some traffic sense in them, this thing would have not happened," a senior citizen said.