New Year Gift: Police plan 30 new one-ways

More of the same: 30 new one-ways for City
Vijay Times

Bangalore: Encouraged by a slump in road mishaps during 2005 as compared to the statistics available for the previous year, the traffic police are now armed with 30 more roads to make Bangalore go ‘‘one way’’ in a bid to streamline traffic at a time when almost 900 new vehicles have been hitting the roads daily . With this, the garden City will have a total of 330 one-way routes on its road network.

The existing traffic plan has yielded results inspite of the traffic management remaining an uphill task considering a huge vehicular population of 26 lakh already existing in the City , says Bangalore Police Commissioner Ajai K umar Singh.

‘‘The basic concept behind oneway is to ensure a unidirectional smooth flow of traffic by removing bottle-necks. In case of one-ways, the traffic normally doesn’t get stranded for long even at traffic signals and the travel time is reduced considerably ," Abdul Saleem, Deputy Commissioner of Police, points out. With no intervention of oncoming vehicles and much less vehicular density on the roads at any given time of the day , the accident rate has seen a slump , he points out, citing figures of 793 fatal accidents during 2005 as compared to 870 during the previous year .

While the department is working out the technicalities and the modalities involved in identifying and trying out the proposed roads as oneways, Saleem said,‘‘W e have been regularly announcing in newspapers about the one-ways which have been introduced time and again for the convenience of the public. As of now we have no plans to announce it on SMS." However , the one-way rules have been accepted with considerable reluctance by a large number of motorists. As Srinivas M udakavi, a resident of J C Nagar , laments ‘‘ If I want to reach office on time, I have to leave half-an-hour earlier than my schedule as I have to travel a much longer distance, wending my way through Jayamahal Road and Nandidurga Road to the Cantonment area all the way from J C Nagar after the one-way was introduced in November ." The frequent changes in traffic plans, at times on a trial basis, have left many motorists in a confused state adding to the chaos and leading to road rage during peak hours.

Bangalore: The first week of J anuary has seen a spate of trafficrelated casualties, with as many as 15 persons killed in 14 accidents and 105 persons injured in 122 accidents.

During the same period, the City traffic police have booked 14,281 cases against motorists and collected Rs16,33,775 as fines. Around 148 vehicles have been towed away and Rs 2,19,000 collected as fines.Among other traffic-related offences, 151 cases of drunken driving, 951 cases of violating one-way rules, 43 cases of demanding excess fare, 2761 cases of zig-zag parking, 111 cases of auto drivers turning down passengers, 1035 cases of overspeeding and 2055 cases of signal jumping,have been booked. VTN