Safety comes last here!

Citizens can hope for a change, and for the better, because a beginning for streamlining traffic in the twin township has been made. A joint meeting of the PCMC and the traffic police officials was held last week. Today, on July 21, the civic officials and the police authorities will be conducting a joint survey to examine various traffic problems.

The PCMC has decided to issue a notification for initiating action against haphazard parking of vehicles on various roads. The roads to be notified will also be finalised after the survey has been completed. Under section 208 of the Brihanmumbai Provincial Municipal Corporation Act, the authorities will have the right to seize vehicles parked illegally or those which cause hurdles to the smooth movement of traffic. The notification is likely to be published within the next three months.

Meanwhile, the corporation will also be initiating the process of land acquisition for creating parking zones. Municipal commissioner B.I. Nagrale states, “There are twenty sites which have been reserved for parking zones in the PCMC development plan. Twelve sites have already been acquired. The transport associations themselves will be asked to develop the parking zones. Pay and Park schemes could be implemented at these locations.”

Although the meeting discussed as many as fifteen proposals for streamlining traffic, the primary causes for traffic hurdles seemed to be overlooked. Standing committee chairperson Shamim Pathan pointed out to the traffic authorities that reckless driving by drivers of company buses has become a major cause of concern. “Is there no prescribed speed limit for these buses,” Pathan asked. The traffic authorities said that the speed limit has already been prescribed but the drivers did not follow them. Pathan added that most drivers worked on contract basis with the companies and, therefore, had a careless attitude towards traffic safety.

he issue of the State Transport buses taking an unauthorised halt opposite the Pimpri police station also figured during the meeting. According to Nagrale the senior ST officials will be directed to discontinue the unauthorised halts.

More than the drivers of the private company buses, the PMT and the PCMT drivers are responsible for causing severe traffic problems on the highway stretch and various other internal roads. The meeting, however, seemed to neglect the problem. PMT and PCMT buses too simply stop right in the middle of the road. Not only does this bring the traffic to a halt, it has also caused several mishaps, many of them being serious ones. Directives to the bus drivers and also the senior authorities of both the PMT and the PCMT would suffice to put an end to this problem.

Jumping traffic signals is routine affair for the drivers. Incidentally, a PCMT bus driver literally paid the price for his action recently as the traffic police recovered a fine from him.

Mayor Madhukar Pawle is of the view that stringent measures for disciplining the drivers of the three-seater and six-seater autorickshaws need to be taken. Pawle stressed that the flouting of traffic norms by the drivers has become rampant and needs to be checked urgently. Six-seaters continue to block traffic at all the chowks and road junctions. As a result, altercations between the road users and drivers has become a common experience.

The traffic authorities however have a different answer to the problem. “We have been taking action against six-seaters. In Pimpri-Chinchwad a fine of Rs 1.96 lakh has been recovered in the past six months in 3,638 cases,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (traffic) Himmatrao Deshbhratar states.

The traffic authorities state that apart from measures by the police, the citizens themselves need to observe traffic rules.