Managing traffic in Delhi ‘challenging task’, says police commissioner

Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik on Friday admitted that managing traffic in Delhi was very challenging due to ever increasing number of vehicles and traffic violations.

Inaugurating a ‘School Road Safety Awareness Campaign 2017-18’ here, Patnaik said the aim was to catch the students young so that they grow into law abiding citizens.

“Delhi traffic, as you all would know and perhaps would be experiencing on a day-to-day basis, it is a very, very challenging problem,” Patnaik said.

“Many issues are there, road network has not expanded, vehicles are increasing exponentially day by day... The management of traffic in Delhi is not becoming an easy task. And to compound the problems, we have violations of traffic rules (that are) almost unmanageable,” he said.

“I am saying almost unmanageable because my traffic officers are working hard, they are there all the time trying to discipline the violators, but the violations are so many that it that becomes difficult to manage the traffic,” the commissioner said.

The number of registered vehicles in Delhi is over one crore. According to Delhi transport department data, the number was 10,567,712 till May 25. Of these 3,172,842 were cars.

Patnaik said the police wanted to impart training at a tender age as the attitude of children firms up as they grow up and it becomes difficult to change it later.

The School Road Safety Awareness Campaign aims to sensitise 15 lakh students in 1,200 schools of Delhi in the next four months on road safety. Over 200 trained Delhi police officials will be conducting workshops and lectures.

Deputy commissioner (traffic) DK Gupta said they also plan to start road safety clubs in schools.

“Most of our students are from poor families who are unaware of traffic rules and these campaigns help them a lot,” Rajeshwari Kapri, a government school principal present at the function, said.