Hyderabad adds 30 pelican signals, trained volunteers to ease pedestrian woes

Good news to #pedestrians

Today 30 new pelican signals were activated across the city. All these signals will be operated by trained traffic volunteers,which is first time in India, to ensure the pedestrians crosses the roads safely.

Was at upper tankbund to inaugurate one… pic.twitter.com/lGtrDoqFZ2

— CV Anand IPS (@CVAnandIPS) May 17, 2023

While this system allows pedestrians to cross the roads at locations other than intersections and is designed to improve safety for both pedestrians and drivers, all these signals will be manually operated by the volunteers and will give a window of 15-20 seconds for one to cross the road safely by turning the vehicular signal red in both directions, Anand said.

“Many road crossing systems like foot-over-bridges have not been used for various reasons as many people lack awareness and have a total disregard for road rules. Though Pelican crossings are common abroad, here in our city, we have noticed that many drivers don’t stop at these signals. So we had to train a pool of volunteers to operate these signals and man these points, which is the first time in India,” he said.

Besides, the new system is expected to facilitate improved accessibility for people with disabilities or mobility impairments, increase the visibility of crosswalks to drivers, and regulate and ensure the safe flow of traffic. Anand said the city police and the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation worked to identify these locations and install these signals.

In our endeavour to foster #accountability and #transparency in law enforcement, we have issued 100 body worn cameras to field level traffic officers.

These cams facilitate review of events by supervisors,improves communication,and encourage respectful interactions between the… pic.twitter.com/JKOPHFPFoP

— CV Anand IPS (@CVAnandIPS) May 17, 2023

While distributing body-worn cameras to 100 traffic frontline officers, he said these officers could record their interactions with the public during enforcement, accidents, and other incidents.

“The feed from the body-worn camera can be seen live in the Traffic control room. This will improve transparency and accountability in Traffic Management and keep a check on undesired behaviours from the violators and the enforcement officers,” he said.

Earlier last year, the GHMC sanctioned 94 pelican signals in the jurisdiction of Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Rachakonda commissionerates. As 30 of them are operationalised in Hyderabad, GHMC is expected to expedite the installation of the rest in the two other police commissionerates.