B-Trac may be off-track before completion

B-Trac may be off-track before completion
Vijay Times

Bangalore: The much-hyped B-Trac 2010 project, a brainchild of the City police for effective traffic management, may face several hurdles even before reaching the right track.

Seen as a panacea for all traffic problems in the City, the project would first of all require an adequate traffic police manpower to make it a success, which is, however, woefully short of requirement.

State traffic advisor M N Srihari said, the project, to kick-start from Nov 1, will require a minimum of 3,000 traffic policemen for effective implementation. However, statistics reveal the department has just 1,709 police personnel to manage an increasingly chaotic City traffic. Include those deputed from other departments to help manage the City traffic, the figure will still only be 2,250. Moreover, at any given time, there are only 1,250 personnel on duty, as others are deputed for VIP, court and office work, a senior officer said.

This figure is far too less for a City where traffic experts have identified at least 3,000 accident-prone junctions, which needs at least one policeman to be on guard from dusk to dawn.

A proposal to recruit an additional 1,832 policemen is pending with the State government. The situation could be tackled better if a fresh batch of recently recruited policemen are appointed before Nov 1.

However, despite inclusion of an Intelligent Transport System (ITS) for traffic management, police presence is essential to ensure smooth flow of traffic, as motorists and road users in Bangalore regularly indulge in traffic violations, says Srihari.

4 Traffic Management - through regulations and restructuring

4 Traffic Infrastructure - in terms of grade separators and sub-ways

4 Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) - use of Automated Traffic Control Systems, Synchronised Signal Systems

4 Automated Enforcement - through PDAs


Bangalore: The Regional Transport Office (RTO), is conducting driving tests in parking lots of buildings and inner roads. Reason: it has no space. Now, the department has appealed to the State government to direct the Bangalore Development Authority to grant a five-acre site within the jurisdiction of each of the 12 RTOs, including Ramanagar and Devanahalli, for building state-of-theart, test-driving tracks.

Transport Commissioner Omprakash told Vijay Times on Friday that lack of proper driving tracks at all RTOs is compelling them to conduct tests in an unscientific manner. "This makes it impossible to analyse skills scientifically," he lamented.

Explaining the test-driving track required for the tests, he said, "The track consists of a number of sub-tracks, for parallel parking, perpendicular parking and inclined parking for light motor vehicles, heavy mother vehicles and two wheelers with standard dimensions." He also mentioned a long list of other track requirements such as for reverse driving, U-turns, figure-8 track, as also a six-lane road and an automatic traffic control (manually or electronically operated), among other urgent requirements. For such tracks, it is necessary to have at least five acres of land in each RTO jurisdiction.

Citing the Dharwad RTO as an ideal example, he said driving tests there are conducted in a scientific method. "In Bangalore, due to space constraints, we are requesting land for at least two offices to begin with," he said.

Transport dept to go modern

State Transport department has decided to procure modern equipments to step up its quality of monitoring before giving fitness certificates to the vehicles. Transport commissioner Omprakash kumar told Vijay Times on Friday that the equipments used to test the vehicles before giving fitness certificates had become old and lost their accuracy. Hence, transport department had decided to procure modern equipments. The government for the first time in the history had released a big amount of Rs 15 crore to the transport department and this amount would be utilised for this purpose, he said.