Traffic goes haywire in city

Rajahmundry: Police face a gigantic task to regulate vehicular traffic on national highway and also on city roads in the absence of traffic signals and adequate man power in the city. According to an estimate more than 75,000 vehicles including two and four wheelers, auto rickshaws and lorries will be plying in the city while several thousands of vehicles cross the city on their way from Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam. Though the authorities have installed traffic signals at almost all important junctions on city roads, they hardly function for want of regular maintenance. Even if some of them are good enough to function, long hours of power cut make them useless to regulate vehicular traffic. There is no power backup facility to them.

The authorities have set up as many as 55 closed circuit television cameras at 21 important junctions in the city limits. Out of them, only 35 are functioning while 20 are malfunctioning. As these cameras are also not having any power backup facility, they function only when there is power supply and even in case of inverters arranged at one or two important junctions, they are not in a working condition. Though the traffic police sent a communication to the municipal commissioner S. Ravindra Babu on mal-functioning of CCTV cameras, there is no progress so far. The Rajahmundry Municipal Corporation entered into an agreement with a Hyderabad based firm Stanpower for installation and the day-to-day upkeep of these CCTV cameras earlier.

The police claimed to issue e-challans, but so far it is not being implemented for want of logistics support. As there are no requisite markings on the roads as to where the vehicles should be stopped when red light glows and when the pedestrians should cross the roads on Zebra markings and also due to malfunctioning of CCTV camers, the police are unable to issue e-challans. Commuters complain that traffic constables are often seen speaking on mobile phones for long time even when the vehicles move haphazardly at junctions on NH-16 and on city roads. Traffic DSP K. Krishna Prasanna said, “We are planning to streamline regulation of vehicles soon by sorting out problems.”