BAREILLY: State urban development minister Suresh Khanna who was in Bareilly on Sunday announced that the UP government would demolish bicycle tracks built during the tenure of the previous Akhilesh Yadav government. Construction of these tracks had been an ambitious and much-publicised project of the Samajwadi Party government. Khanna said the tracks needed to be demolished because they were causing traffic congestion.“We will demolish these bicycle tracks, which are unused and have caused traffic congestion. The demolition process will begin shortly,” Khanna said.Under a scheme launched by former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, bicycle tracks were constructed in Bareilly, Lucknow and Noida districts to conserve the environment and encourage the two-wheeler as a “sustainable” means of transport.After considering the study ‘Pedalling towards a greener India’ conducted by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the state urban housing policy had recommended construction of bicycle tracks for “easy, smooth and safe movement of cyclists” in urban areas of the state. The Bareilly district administration during the regime of Samajwadi Party had planned to construct three more cycle tracks in the city.However, the much-hyped bicycle track in Bareilly’s Satellite area, which was 850 metres long and was built at a cost of Rs 6.48 crore, including the cost of widening the road, never served its purpose as it has been illegally occupied by vendors and has become a parking zone for autorickshaws and other vehicles.Even the barricades put up by the Bareilly Development Authority to restrict entry of three-wheelers and four-wheelers into the cycle track has been removed now. The signboard which indicates the bicycle track is also damaged. In Lucknow and Noida, over 100 km of tracks had been built, with plans to build another 270 km in the rest of the state. In sectors 44 and 62 in Noida, 42 km of tracks were laid, while in Lucknow, tracks over 35 km were built at a cost of Rs 31 crore. Another 31 km, at a cost of Rs 34 crore, was nearing completion when the government fell. A ‘cycle highway’ was built in 2016 from Etawah to Agra, a distance of 207 km, at a cost of Rs 134 crore.Khanna, who was in Bareilly to plant saplings as part of the ongoing Van Mahotsav , said that the Yogi government has implemented a vendor policy in the state. “Under this policy, street vendors will be registered and rehabilitated to deal with congestion along busy routes. As road-side vendors are one of the main causes for traffic snarls across the state, we will rehabilitate them to ensure smooth flow of traffic.”