The Hindu : Traffic management needs improvement

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 24, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai

Traffic management needs improvement

By S.Shivakumar

CHENNAI April 23. The fatal knocking down of a scooterist by a water tanker near the Nandanam Signal at Turnbulls Point on Tuesday afternoon, a day before the discussion on the Police budget in the Assembly, turned public attention to the state of traffic management in the city.

Devendra Shankar, 42, of Mandaveli was knocked down from behind by the water tanker killing him on the spot. The shocking road death was witnessed by several motorists and pedestrians at the busy intersection around 3 p.m. but none ventured near the victim at the spot.

The victim is one of over a dozen city residents who have been killed by water tankers over the past year. During 1999-2000, MTC buses were involved in 146 road deaths.

``Where the cause is known, it can no longer be treated as an accident, but only as a road death that could have been prevented,'' is the global safety norm, but not for the road safety agencies in Chennai, starting with the traffic police.

If the Chennai Corporation and the State Highways (responsible for the Inner Ring Road) have left the city's roads battered enough to be death traps, the Road Safety Commissioner (RSC), mandated with the task of improving safety, has practically not begun functioning yet.

Despite the Government spending huge sums on modernisation schemes for the traffic and transport departments, it is not receiving precise reports from the Transport (Road) Safety Commissioner, or case by case analyses from the police.

During the year 2000, the Transport Commissioner was nominated as RSC and asked to, among other things, analyse statistics relating to road accidents, take up case studies and identify causes, accident-prone spots, take up installation of traffic lights, provide road medians and very importantly, better methods of training.

As accident victims are finding out, none of these mandates apparently have been fulfilled for Chennai. What is more, the city police have been allowing illegal vehicles such as fishcarts to operate on city roads, though the G.O. enabling their use has been stayed in the High Court.

Thousands of autorickshaws operate as public service vehicles in Chennai, with untrained drivers, who cause grievous injuries to themselves and to passengers. Bad autorickshaw and tourist taxi drivers do not have to go to any training school for ``re-training'', unlike bad bus drivers.

Traffic lights are not working in several junctions, and even where they do, the police do not uniformly enforce them. The Anna Salai, prestigious four-lane artery of the city, is in a shambles, the medians broken down at places, the service lanes ruined by rains.

The view from the traffic police end is that things are looking up. They claim that there is strict enforcement and there was a drop in the number of road accidents, compared to last year. The CMDA has been periodically adding to the traffic problems through its scheme to regularise illegal structures, including several residential and commercial complexes.

Vehicles are parked haphazardly in front of several hotels. The problem is acute in front of a hotel on Kodambakkam High Road, very close to the Gemini flyover. Similarly, the police turn a blind eye to vehicles parked in front of a sweet shop at Anna Nagar very close to the tower signal.

Traffic planners demand that action should be taken against various government departments, which issue licence for commercial establishments lacking parking facilities. Shops attracting traffic without facility to handle it should also be penalised. Surprisingly even hospitals do not provide parking facilities. The road in front of a hospital at Shenoy Nagar has been converted into a parking lot for visitors.

While traffic police claim that studies show indiscipline among motorists to be the main reason for accidents, the credibility of enforcement has eroded as there is no evidence against the offender. Though CCTV cameras were installed at some traffic points on an experimental basis, the scheme has been wound up.

Strangely, the mobile ``interceptor'' jeeps, equipped with cameras, unveiled by the traffic police, are missing from city roads even where traffic is an everyday problem. An offer by the Delhi-based Institute of Road Traffic Education (IRTE), which participates in surveillance in the national capital along with the police, to extend similar help to Chennai, has not found favour with the Government.

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