Cops tweak signal timers at 52 junctions to ease snarls

Nagpur: A Nagpur traffic police study has found that 52 intersections in the city witness frequent jams.
“In an attempt to reduce congestion in the present traffic flow pattern at these intersections, we have retimed the traffic signals at over 10 corridors as part of the city’s congestion management plan,” said deputy commissioner of police (traffic) Raj Tilak Roushan.

Following a rise in complaints about jams during peak hours, the DCP formed a team of traffic police personnel led by police inspector Ashok Meshram. “We were deployed at different points to take a count of the vehicles moving around. The assessments of traffic flow was done during peak morning and evening hours,” Meshram said.

Data on the number of two-wheelers, autorickshaws and cars plying on each stretch, hour-wise jams was collected, he said. Later the team analysed the reasons for jams. “We found that traffic snarls occur due to ongoing development works and rise in number of private vehicles,” the PI added.

As the road infrastructure, which is already good as compared to other metro cities, the traffic police decided to introduce changes in the current traffic flow patterns after the study. “So we tweaked timers of signals. Timers on many routes were increased between 5 and 15 seconds and reduced the same at few intersections,” he said.

Citing an example, the PI said, “We have increased the timer by 15 seconds at Japanese Garden Square for vehicles coming from West High Court road and heading towards Old Katol Naka.” Similarly, the traffic police have increased timer for vehicular traffic on Wardha road, especially the patch between Vidhan Bhavan Square and Hotel Pride Square T-point.

Similarly, “We reduced the timer by 5 seconds at Bole Petrol pump square for the traffic criss-crossing East High Court Road. The other busy junctions where signals retimed included GPO Square, Law College Square, Shankar Nagar Square, Bajaj Nagar Square and Ravi Nagar Square”, the PI said.

TOI visited many busy junctions, which had become infamous for traffic jams, and found the move helped ease congestion during lean and peak hours.

He, however, admitted that the move though helped in curbing jams but the results will be apparent until the traffic police implement synchronizes all the traffic signal lights to ensure that the traffic flows smoothly on all busy roads.

The signal retiming effort is one of key areas the new DCP has pinpointed to relieve congestion in the city.

The others include better road closure reporting by using social media, creating a traffic enforcement team, speeding up public construction and instituting a traffic awareness campaign.