Monday, June 21, 2010

Traffic Management: Engineering, Education & Enforcement

MANGALORE: He is credited with bringing sense of order to traffic in cultural capital of the state - Mysore, and is now battling hard to do a Mysore in the capital city of Bangalore. What Praveen Sood did to traffic in Mysore as police commissioner there, and is trying to do in Bangalore as additional commissioner of police (traffic/security) has caught the eye of home minister V S Acharya, who wants his traffic skill sets for this city.

In fact, it was an impromptu decision by Dr Acharya to pull Sood's name out of the hat when traffic woes haunting this port city came overflowing at a review meeting of city's infrastructure problems conducted by the Urban development minister Suresh Kumar recently. Having seen Sood's performance closely in Bangalore, Acharya had no qualms in stating that Sood would find solutions to traffic problems here as well.

Sood, appreciative of the confidence that home minister has in his abilities told TOI over phone that there are no quick fix solutions to traffic problems the world over. "Each city has its peculiar problems," Sood said. But problems in each city although different can be addressed by sticking to the three Es - namely engineering, education and enforcement. Each of these components has its own importance and cannot be neglected, he adds.

While the engineering aspect has to deal jointly by the police, city corporation and public works department, Sood said education (of all road users) plays a vital aspect in having orderly traffic. Enforcement though an important part should be the least used weapon in police armoury, but an important one when education fails, he avers.

Some offences for which there should be zero tolerance, he said include jumping signals, over speeding, drunken driving and motorists entering no-entry roads. They are important from safety point of view of all concerned. Enforcement in Bangalore has netted a revenue of Rs 44 crore up from Rs 14 crore, but at the same time has brought down fatal accidents from 1,000 to less than 600 on a comparative basis in last two years, he pointed out. (TOI)

2 comments:

Bhupesh said...

Traffic is more a problem of engineering and planning in Bangalore then education and enforcement.

Few example :1) when outer ring road was built lot of land was available, more land should have been acquired to balloon all crossing so that we have extra lane for exit/entry/uTurn/Bus stop near these crossing. But this element is missing all over Bangalore.

2) when we construct flyover, we forget about pedestrian and cyclist
. Govt section 100+ cr for flyover but does not allocate 2Cr for skywalk same time.

3) Because we do not have extra lane for vehicle to merge from side lane or skywalk for pedestrian to cross the road, we just put speed breaker after flyover descend.

4) BDA still carrying 30 yr old mentality, they do not create enough commercial space in layout.
Allowing 60/80/100ft road for Retail commercial create lot more traffic problems.

Arya-Truth said...

Dear Acharya,

I am having big concern on vehicles riding with exceeding speed limits. Why can't Karnataka have heavy speeding fine? I am in Mangalore. Here are the privite buses does not have any rules. They are going with very high speed. This affecting other passengers. Why can't we introduce heavy fine for them? I don't think they are saving lot of time by travelling with that speed. This is one of the step we have to take it here. I hope that you will introduce this rule.

Thanks & Regards
Ravi.