Chandigarh roads get traverse bar markings to help reduce accidents

“Yellow-coloured zigzag lines on the white colour lanes are to caution the motorists to not stop the vehicles and also to not change the lanes. Some distance away from these lines and 25 metres before the pedestrian marking (zebra crossing), six horizontal white-coloured stripes with 5 mm height are drawn to reduce the speed of the motor vehicles,” a road engineering official explained. TBMs are made on vulnerable locations where there is a high risk of road accidents involving pedestrians, the official underscored.

Pedestrian ways between Rose Garden, Sector 16 and Leisure Valley and Sector 10, GMSH-16 and Sector 10; Sector 27 and Sector 26; Sector 8 and Sector 18, are some of the locations of where TBMs have been made on the recommendations of Chandigarh traffic police. They are drawn according to the standards set by the Indian Road Congress (IRC), a supreme body of highway engineers in the country. The administration has planned to make TBMs across Chandigarh.

Meanwhile, the graph of fatalities in the road accidents has gone down in the last a few years, but pedestrians and two-wheeler riders are among the most vulnerable on city roads. According to figures, more than 350 pedestrians have lost their lives in road accidents in the last decade in Chandigarh.

Need for awareness

“In the first phase, we have identified at least 10 vulnerable locations on Madhya Marg. The TBMs are being made and their impact on the road is being studied,” DSP (Traffic, Road Safety) Jaswinder Singh said.

He also stressed that motorists need to be made aware about these markings.

The TBMs are creating confusion among the motorists, said Rakesh Singla, a biker from Panchkula. “A common man who is not aware about the TBMs can get confused seeing the yellow-coloured zigzag lines. Authorities should also aware public about these markings,” Singla highlighted.