Police tweak traffic plans to stop wrong-side driving

PUNE: The traffic police have started making some engineering changes on roads and stepped up the crackdown to stop wrong-side driving.

Besides sealing punctures on various roads across the city, the traffic police are making contraflow lanes on thoroughfares by using barricades to stop people from resorting to wrong-side driving. The police registered 644 wrong-side driving cases in January.

“The department had identified 53 locations where wrong-side driving is rampant. We have made some engineering changes at 22 of these spots and we can see a difference,” deputy commissioner of police (traffic) Tejaswi Satpute said.

The first such engineering intervention was along Fergusson College Road. A separate pathway was made from Lalit Mahal hotel to Dnyaneshwar Paduka Chowk on the otherwise one-way road by using barricades.

Similarly, the traffic police have put up barricades at Shahir Amar Shaikh Chowk to curb wrong-side driving towards the Mangalwar Peth slums or at the College of Agriculture signal to allow contraflow movement of vehicles towards a lane leading to Shivajinagar police lines.

Among the areas where several road punctures have been sealed are Baner, Koregaon Park, Wanowrie and on Ahmednagar road.

A section of the social activists is, however, not convinced with the arrangements. “Having such contraflow lanes is like admitting that people will resort to wrong-side driving on one-way roads,” said Ranjit Gadgil, programme director of NGO Parisar.

“This is a crude planning and cannot work as a policy. There is no room for such small segments of contraflow paths in modern street designs. Such measures make people think that it is okay to drive on the wrong side for convenience,” he said.

“The contraflow paths can be dangerous. These lanes are neither marked properly nor they are a permanent arrangement,” Gadgil said.

Samaiirah of Safe Road Foundation said permissions were taken from the Pune Municipal Corporation to make these contraflow lanes, but it should not be allowed. She said, “Why should one make contraflow lanes on one-way roads? A permanent solution must be sought to stop wrong-side driving, instead of going with the contraflow lanes.”