Bus stops on most of the arterial roads are located at wrong locations – either close to the signals or at blind spots immediately after a road curve.
This particular aspect, added with the culture of bus drivers to stop vehicles well on the middle of the road, proves to be a root cause of traffic snarls at a number of places.
A senior transport department official, on condition of anonymity, said that there is a need for a sustained sensitisation drive to educate the bus passengers to wait on the pavement, so that the drivers steer to the left extreme of the road at bus stops to avoid traffic hold ups behind the buses.
Bus stops at a number of places in the city need to be located away from road turnings and signals/junctions and such a move would definitely clear traffic bottlenecks at many places. Bus stops at Lakshmi Mills, Ramanathapuram Junction, Singanallur Junction, Pappanaickenpalayam, Hope College Junction, Cowley Brown Road and Pankaja Mill Road are located close to signals and road turnings/junctions. These are only a few examples and there are many more such bus stops, says a sub-inspector, who had served in the city traffic police wing for more than five years. He recalls the number of attempts and efforts, he took for relocating those bus stops.
The Road Safety-cum-Traffic Advisory Committee has been taking note of this and has pressed for action to shift the bus stops for the last seven years and nothing has translated into action on the field, a senior police official said.
The Traffic Wing of the City Police has flagged this issue with the Corporation and Collectorate on a number of occasions.
According to a police official, at least 24 to 32 bus stops need to be relocated if the stretches of the road and the signals need to be devoid of traffic bottlenecks. A solution on this issue continues to remain elusive for the last two decades, since it requires a coordinated and firm move by the transport department, Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation, Traffic Police and Corporation officials, according to K. Kathirmathiyon, secretary of Coimbatore Consumer Cause.
City police officers agreed on the issue of shelter for bus passengers, wrong location of bus stops and inadequate running time forcing drivers to resort to rash and negligent driving causing fatal accidents. They say that they have been knocking the doors of the departments for nearly seven to eight years and have decided to renew their efforts.