To ease congestion,heavy vehicles banned during peak hours

The Bombay Goods Transport Association (BGTA) said while this might save time for city’s commuters,it could adversely impact supply of essentials like vegetables and milk to grocery stores from wholesale markets. The new rules will be implemented on all main roads including Swami Vivekananda Road between Bandra and Borivali,Western Express Highway,Eastern Express Highway,Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg running from Central Mumbai to northern suburbs,Mahatma Gandhi Road and Dadabhai Nowrojee Road.

While an old government resolution had directed that commuters be given priority over heavy vehicles,the rule was never enforced. Minidors,matadors,trucks,tempos and trailers and construction vehicles,besides heavy vehicles,will face restrictions under the new rule.

The department has called a meeting with the BGTA. “We are yet to officially convey this decision to the owners and association members. It will be done later this week,” said Pratap Dighavkar,Deputy Commissioner of Traffic Police. Dighavkar and his team had studied the traffic patterns across vital stretches and junctions in the last three months,taking peak hour notings to understand the length of traffic snarls,and the distances most affected in the crucial hours.

“If you remove these vehicles in those crucial hours,you allow for a smoother linear movement. Besides the delay to a goods carrier is not as drastic as that faced by a commuter. While studying the patterns,we found that the same set of vehicles was getting stuck on the same stretches regularly,” said Dighavkar.

The study found that on a stretch like Eastern Express Highway,around 5,000 vehicles travelled within an hour during peak hours. Surveillance at junctions threw more interesting figures. At Haji Ali junction,more than 3,500 cars travel in different directions,indicating a frenzied peak hour. These figuers exclude the number of buses. Traffic police officers said with every passing day,more than 200 vehicles are added on Mumbai roads.

“We found that most of the snarls involved a heavy vehicle. Traffic jams on the south-bound stretches were observed during mornings. These are the same people who return to these same stretches in the evening and get stuck,” said Dighavkar.

Ashok Goyal,president,BGTA,said the rule,while being populist,would adversely affect commerce. “If this ban is implemented on small vehicles like tempos,it could affect transportation of essentials like vegetables,fruits and milk,” he said. While the details of the proposal are yet to be looked at by transport associations,Goyal said,“We will ask authorities to reduce the duration of ban in morning hours for south-bound goods traffic.” According to BGTA,around 30,000-40,000 goods vehicles travel south during morning peak hours daily.

(With inputs from Priyal Dave)

megha.sood@expressindia.com