Navi Mumbai Transit

Manali will look like this every long weekend until Himachal limits how many cars can drive into a town. Gandhi Jayanti fell on a Friday, so most of North India got three days off together. Shimla, Mussoorie, Nainital and Manali all choked on the same day. In Shimla, cars parked along the roads made it worse, and even five lanes at the Parwanoo toll plaza couldn't cope. It is not an infrastructure problem. Every famous place in the world has faced this. Zermatt in Switzerland has banned tourist cars for decades. You park in Täsch, about 5 km away, and take a 12-minute shuttle train in. In Zion National Park in the US, private cars can't use the main canyon road for most of the year. Everyone rides a free shuttle. Canada closed the road to Moraine Lake in Banff to private cars in 2023. You take a Parks Canada shuttle or a licensed bus. Japan capped the main Mount Fuji trail at 4,000 climbers a day in 2024 and added a fee. Venice started charging day-trippers an entry fee in 2024 on its busiest days. France splits the country into three zones and staggers school holidays, so the whole country doesn't hit the road in the same week. India also does this in a few places. Ooty and Kodaikanal use an e-pass with a daily cap, 8,000 vehicles for the Nilgiris on weekends, and train and government bus passengers don't need one. Manali itself has done it for Rohtang for years. Before the cap, around 5,000 vehicles went up every day. Now it's 1,200 with an online permit. So the system exists. It just stops at Rohtang. Here's how Himachal should roll it out. Step one, before Diwali. Put up live "Manali full" alerts on Google Maps and at the state border, and tow every car parked on the road. Step two, by the winter season. Make an online pass compulsory for outside cars on long weekends, linked to a hotel booking. No booking, no car entry. Exempt HRTC buses and local vehicles. Step three, within a year. Build a large parking lot near Patlikuhl and run electric shuttles into Manali every 10 minutes. Raise the green tax on long weekends and use it to pay for the shuttles. And there you have it. You fix the problem that has taken years and years to fix. In short, too many cars are trying to fit into a small hill town on the same three days. Himachal just needs to apply the same rules the world has been applying to Manali town before the next long weekend.