Telangana finally plans traffic audit, invite tenders from expert consultants

Hyderabad: With nearly 7,000 deaths taking place on an average every year on Telangana roads, the state government has invited tenders from expert consultants to conduct a “road safety audit”.

In the first phase, 1,700 km of national highways will be covered, followed by the state highways and major district roads in subsequent phases.

The road safety audit is being conducted following a directive from the Union road transport and highways ministry. The main objective of the audit is to reduce accidents and casualties. Every year, about 20,000 accidents occur on roads injuring thousands of people in addition to deaths.

The audit will include a study of the volume of traffic and whether the road width is sufficient for it, safety measures to be taken up, road engineering corrections to be made, speed breakers to be installed, road calming measures like sign boards informing the drivers that they have reached city limits and need to slow down, correction of sharp curves and black spots etc.

“So far we have been only making corrections of sharp curves and improving the road width at black spots. This is the first time that a road safety audit is being taken up. The details of the audit along with estimations of corrections to be made should be submitted by March end,” said roads and buildings engineer in chief P. Ravinder Rao.

He added that the technical evaluation of bids was currently underway. While the National Institute of Technology Warangal is in the race to conduct the road safety audit of the state highways and major districts roads, Madhya Pradesh based Lion Engineering Consultants and Gurgaon-based Shwetha Technofile Consultants are among the agencies in the reckoning to conduct the audit of national highways.