City may have 10 new driving tracks

City may have 10 new driving tracks

Vijay Times News

Bangalore: If all goes well, the denizens of the city may not have to keep returning to the RTOs for their driving tests. The driving tests that are getting prolonged because of lack of tracks could be a thing of the past.

The traffic engineers and safety trainers (TEST) have placed a proposal before the State government to add nine new driving tracks to enable all the 10 RTOs in the City to have an exclusive track each.

The track tests could employ scientific testing methods to bring down the per day driving licences (DL) issued from about 1,000 to just 250, he said. The City at present has only one track.

This should be done keeping in view the increasing vehicle population and growing demand for driving licences, M N Sreehari, Chairman, TEST, told Vijay Times.

"The Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP-15) should provide for more tracks," he said.

Sreehari and TEST vice-chairman K V Ramesh in a study said anywhere between 650 and 950 vehicles get registered in Bangalore per day at the 10 RTOs.

Good driving can prevent more than 75 per cent of the road accidents, which includes skill and exposure to traffic rules and regulation.

Driving tracks are designed to test the driving candidate in an environment conducive to the technical requirements.

Sreehari said at present Bangalore had only one driving track, which is located at Peenya.

"The minimum area required for a driving track would be around 10 acres," he said adding, "with just one driving track in the City the RTOs are under pressure to test as many as 1,000 drivers per day. This could be solved through setting up another 10 driving tracks so that the number of candidates tested per track can be brought down to 100 per day."

Transport officials said that both BCC and BDA can chalk out an alternative arrangement to ease the situation and charge a reasonable amount as fees.
Sreehari says several unused parks in the City could be given to the RTOs for a few hours in a day or on specified days.