By Anil Sharma
Fed up with having to keep their eyes perpetually trained on vehicles through the speed guns, and exasperated with the growing number of traffic pile-ups on the city roads, the traffic police has recommended a Traffic Restriction Technique to the government.
Its agenda: get as many vehicles as possible off the road, push up traffic fines manifold and increase parking rates. In short, anything to ensure that the number of vehicles on the choked roads goes down and the traffic offenders face problems in dishing out fines.
Asked why there were so many traffic clogs and jams these days, Joint Commissioner Maxwell Pereira's explained, rather simplistically: "If you have two marbles in a container, you can shake them. If you have ten, shaking them is tougher. But if you have 60, they are jammed and can't move. It's the same on the road."
He says there are too many vehicles on the road and during peak hours all of them move at the same time. The result is a painful slowdown. Add to it the daily rallies and religious processions and the slowdown is often reduced to a complete halt. The 38-lakh vehicles that Delhi has just don't have place to move around. More so during peak times.
The plan submitted to the government is now being studied and sources in the city police say there are indications that it will be accepted and implemented.
The Traffic Restriction Technique aims at somehow bringing down the number of vehicles on the road. There are also recommendations that certain type of vehicles should not be allowed to enter certain areas - on the lines of Mumbai-while parking fees be hiked enough to force people to be more careful on the roads .Suggestions have also been made on scattering the entry and exit time to office to get rid of the 'twice a day ' peak-time mess on the city roads.
The recommendations also include shifting rallies to the outskirts of the capital or at least somewhere where normal traffic is not affected. There is however still a diplomatic silence on religious processions that are actually the biggest problem for the city's traffic.
Traffic police has also suggested that minimum traffic offence fine should be Rs 1000 to scare the people into adhering to traffic norms . Significantly, in 2001, the traffic police challaned 27,68,904 people for varied offences compounding over Rs 29.38 crores as challan money ,the number increased in 2002. Last year, 33,74,118 people were challaned and the compounding amount went upto Rs 31.75 lakh. But the fine paid was obviously not a deterrent .
Incidentally, this is the first time that traffic police has got a positive signal from the surface transport ministry. Earlier recommendations to increase fines have been met with a stony silence. But heavy fines alone won't do the trick for the cops and they know it, since their biggest bane is road space .
In 1971, in the Capital a population of 43 lakh had 2.17 lakh vehicles, traveling on a total road length of 8,380 km. This figure increased to 93 lakh people, 19 lakh vehicles and 22,487 km of road in 1991.
Today, this combination stands at 1.42 crore people , 38 lakh vehicles and a road space of 25,000-odd kms. This works out to a three-time increase in road space since 1971, while there is an over 18 time increase in vehicles.
Traffic police is not completely sure when their proposals will see the light of day but say they are pursuing the matter diligently since there is no other way out of the mess that today exists on the city roads, where a 10 km drive can take up to two hours at peak time.
Courtesy Mid Day, dated January 16, 2003
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