The city’s Integrated Traffic Management System (ITMS), which was introduced the previous month, has been extremely effective, with over 52 per cent of the last four month’s overspeeding challans generated by the new speed gun radars. The number of red light violation challans issued through ITMS are more than 100 percent (11,433) than the total challans (9,341) issued manually and through other modes in the last four months in Chandigarh. Exactly 26,484 motor vehicles were challaned for overspeeding through the speed gun radars between January 1 and April 27, 13,886 of which were challaned by the ITMS in the short span of one month. These 13,886 challans were issued through the CCTV cameras installed at the 10 entry and exit points of Chandigarh adjoining the neighbouring cities of Panchkula and Mohali. “The graph will increase more in the coming days as the challans through ITMS are generated automatically while traffic cops install speed radar guns during limited hours. Indeed, ITMS is more effective than the speed radars, which are manually driven gadgets. The same thing is with the red light violation challans”, a traffic police officer said. A majority of the radar guns were installed at Madhya Marg, Dakshin Marg and Purv Marg as those areas are considered to be more accident-prone than others. The CCTV cameras being regulated through ITMS are installed at 47 traffic junctions, 10 of which are capable of catching overspeeding vehicles. The ITMS is being operated through the Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) which was inaugurated by Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, on March 27. Meanwhile, a total of 11,433 motorists were also challaned for red light violations in the last 30 days through ITMS. “The ITMS will soon be able to detect other traffic violations including riding without a helmet, triple riding, zebra crossing violations, taking wrong turns and use of mobile phone while driving or riding. The work to upgrade the censors in CCTV cameras linked to ITMS is yet to be completed”, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Traffic, Palak Goel, said. The challans slips generate to the addresses of vehicles' owners along with auto-generated text messages that are sent to their cell phones. ITMS has been integrated with the e-challan software of Chandigarh Traffic police which will help traffic police officials to validate the violations detected for the issuance of postal challans to the violators.
