Road chaos a perennial problem in city
LUCKNOW: Traffic chaos is a perennial and growing problem as the city is expanding. Many drives have been launched to streamline traffic but they fizzled out due to change of guard, shortage of traffic cops, absence of proper planning and execution, opine experts.
Traffic police data reveals that at least 411 crossings are to be manned by cops for smooth vehicular movement, but only 70-odd crossings, mainly intersections used by VVIPs, are being manned. Traffic movement on the remaining intersections ‘gets managed on its own’.
Moreover, nearly 1 lakh vehicles are added to the traffic population of the city every year, which subsequently increases traffic pressure, showed the data.
“We are only restricted to some crossings due to shortage of traffic cops. There are only 489 traffic cops in place of 738 approved posts. As many as 15-20 traffic cops are regularly engaged in VVIP duties,” said a traffic cop while sharing his views over the deteriorating traffic situation in the city. He said diversions due to Metro work are also adding to the chaos.
ASP (traffic) Ravi Shankar Nim admitted that there is a huge backlog in traffic cops’ posts, as no recruitment has been done to increase cops’ strength since 2006. He, however, added that DGP Sulkhan Singh has issued a circular recently to fill the vacant posts across the state.
The situation will improve as soon as the traffic department gets more manpower, he added.
SP Singh, former member of National Road Safety Council, stated it is not only the shortage of traffic cops that leads to traffic jams.
The chaos is caused mostly due to lack of proper traffic plan and its execution.
He said traffic problems could be curbed with the joint effort of traffic police, municipal corporation and road construction
agencies like the PWD.
He suggested that the traffic department should focus on enforcement of traffic regulations while the municipal corporation must emphasise on
removing encroachments.
For many years, authorities have not even held a meeting of district road safety council, which is meant to resolve similar issues,” he added.