Incidentally, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had this year appointed an agency to carry out safety audit of the 200-km of the total 1,000 km road stretch in the civic jurisdiction.
With the increasing number of fatal road accidents in urban areas, the Maharashtra government on Friday decided to constitute a six-member committee for each of the local civic bodies, including municipal corporations, to prepare road safety audit reports, while recommending measures to tackle the ‘black spots’ on city roads. In a resolution, the state urban development department said the committee would be headed by the municipal commissioner, while other members will include deputy road transport officer, representative from the traffic police department, executive engineer of the public works department, representative of the engineering college in the respective civic body and executive engineer of the concerned civic body.
The committee would prepare a road safety audit report, on the lines of safety audit of building construction, through a third party organisation and as per the guidelines of the Indian Road Congress. They would have to physically visit the city roads twice a year to ensure that the road safety measures are in place and recommend to the local civic body steps to improve roads.
“The committee will have to identify and visit the black spot. It would have to recommend effective measures to ensure there are no more accidents in the area,” it said.
The local civic body would undertake, on priority basis, the safety measures to improve the road conditions at the identified black spot. It would be the responsibility of the municipal commissioner to get the recommended work done on road safety in their respective jurisdiction.
The municipal corporation would have to submit the report on the working of committee and road safety measures to the state government. The decision to constitute committee for each local civic body was taken as per the suggestions of the Delhi Integrated Multi-modal Transport System (DIMTS), which was appointed to carry out scientific study of roads.
Incidentally, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had this year appointed an agency to carry out safety audit of the 200-km of the total 1,000 km road stretch in the civic jurisdiction.
It identified 1,867 roads as critical of the total 67 roads that were covered in the road safety audit of 200 km road stretch.
The stretch in PMC area of Pune-Ahmednagar road, Hadapsar-Solapur road, Magarpatta road, Pune-Solapur road, Baner road and Pune-Satara road was identified as extremely critical. There were 12 roads that were identified as critical and recommendations were made for corrective measures for extremely critical and critical condition roads. “It is estimated that Rs 195 crore would be required to take up the work to improve the road conditions as per the recommendations made in the road safety audit. Thus, the work will have to be taken in phases and priority would be given to 18 roads that have been identified as critical,” said civic officer.
In a separate study, the traffic department identified 36 black spots on city roads in the area of PMC and neighbouring Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation. The16 black spots were identified on the Dehu-Katraj road bypass.