Civic body will use battery back-up for traffic signals

PUNE: To tackle the issue of traffic signals going defunct during rush hours due to power cuts, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to use battery back-up for traffic signals. 

In the first spell of the monsoon on Monday, traffic signals went defunct leading to traffic chaos in the city. According to the PMC Electrical Department, 10 traffic signals stopped functioning on Monday. These were at Faraskhana, Anand Nagar in Kothrud, Golf Course Chowk in Yerawada, Somnath Nagar Chowk in Viman Nagar, Mahadev Mandir in Kothrud, Shimla Office Chowk, Belbaug chowk, Jijamata Chowk, Shastri Nagar in Yerawada  and Chatuhshrungi area. 

Acting on the demand of the Traffic Police Department, the PMC has installed 242 traffic signals across the city. The PMC has deployed two maintenance vans to repair signals and has assigned repair and maintenance work to a contractor.  

On the background of Monday traffic chaos due to traffic signals breakdown, PMC Electrical Department called a meeting of their engineers to sort out the issue.

PMC Additional City Engineer of Electrical Department, Shrinivas Kandul said, “Three types of problems occur in traffic signals. One is power cut by MSEDCL, damage of service line or electrical cables and manual interference. Besides that LED lights turn off and on irregularly. The computer programme controlling the signal sometimes develops system error affecting the time duration of the signal.”

He said, “Power failure is one of the major problems we face during the monsoon so traffic signals cannot work. Due to this, there is traffic chaos in city area. Now, we have decided to use battery back-up for signals in major chowks or junctions where there is more traffic volume. It will help to avoid breakdown of signal during power failure and regulate traffic smoothly in monsoon. We will identify chowks or junctions and make provision to place batteries as alternative supply in case of power failure.” 

“There is one-hour battery back-up available in the market which costs around Rs 6,000 per battery,” he added.