Visakhapatnam: The city traffic police came up with a few alternative routes to mitigate traffic congestion and road accidents in the city during the peak hours but a majority of the motorists have been ignoring them.
The increasing vehicular traffic on around 73-km of NH-16 stretch, that passes through the city, has been creating traffic chaos round-the-clock and leading to accidents. Controlling the traffic is a major problem in the city with the indisciplined motorists, say traffic police.
The city traffic police observed that vehicular movement between Hanumanthawaka and Maddilapalem, NAD Junction, Satyam Junction and Thatichetlapalem on the NH-16 is high round the year and appealed to the motorists to use alternative roads for a safe journey.
The vehicular population in Vizag city has touched 10.6 lakh in 2015 from 7.9 lakh in 2013 and similarly, road accidents in the city have increased to 125 per month in 2016 from 95 in 2012.
Since 2010, as many as 1,604 people died on the roads in the city and over 70 per cent fatal accidents were reported on NH-16 stretch, said ADCP (Traffic) K. Mahendra Patrudu.
"We have appealed to the motorists to make best use of alternative routes during the peak hours to avoid traffic chaos but a majority of them do not follow our suggestions citing trivial reasons," he added.
Given the rapid pace of growth in the population and increasing number of vehicles every year, the traffic woes will rise on the NH-16 stretch. Motorists in the city are also adding to the problem by flouting traffic norms and ignoring the appeals of the cops, said ACP (Traffic) K. Prabhakar.
"Regulating the traffic at major junctions like NAD Kotharoad, Maddilapalem, Hanumanthawaka, Venk-ojipalem and a few other areas in the city has become a daunting task for the staff with motorists using the NH-16 stretch instead of alternative routes," he added.
Meanwhile, commuters in the city can look forward to chaos-free roads in the coming days as the traffic police and the Road Transport Authority (RTA) officials will curb movement of heavy commercial vehicles on NH-16 stretch during the peak hours. Plans are afoot to earmark alternative routes and stop goods and heavy vehicles at all the entry points into the city.
Talking to newsmen here on Sunday after a review meeting with the city police, officials of RTA, NHAI, APSRTC, GVMC and others on traffic management in the city, HRD minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao told district collector N Yuvaraj to form a city traffic advisory committee to address the traffic issues.
The minister directed the officials to submit an action plan to manage traffic in 10 days. “No auto-rickshaw zones, traffic islands will be created at a few places,” he said.
