Wadala road opens way to disaster

MUMBAI, FEB 11: A newly opened link road without traffic lights and speed-breakers carrying heavy vehicles, coupled with encroachments on...

MUMBAI, FEB 11: A newly opened link road without traffic lights and speed-breakers carrying heavy vehicles, coupled with encroachments on both sides, make the prefect recipe for a disaster on the Salt Pan Road at Wadala. This was amply proved on Wednesday evening when an eight-year-old boy on his way to school was knocked down by a speeding vehicle as he crossed the road.

For one of the busiest roads in the city for the past five months, the 90-feet Barkat Ali Road is bereft of basic facilities like footpaths, traffic signals, and pedestrian crossings. Nearly 20,000 vehicles use the road connecting the Sion-Panvel highway everyday.

The main reason for the heavy traffic has been the diversion of heavy vehicles on the highway from Sion due to the construction of a flyover at Sion junction. These vehicles cross over to Wadala from Five Gardens on to the Barkat Ali junction from where they take the 90-feet road to rejoin the highway at Chembur.

Tankers coming from the Indian Oil Corporation on the nearby Antop Hill Road as well as containers from the Mumbai Port Trust along the BPT Road add to this traffic. Along with them are those trucks making their way to the Wadala Truck Terminal nearby.

Amazingly the Barkat Ali junction, from where the 90-feet link road emanates, has no traffic signal to control the surge of oncoming vehicles. This junction cater to traffic coming from MbPT on one side, Wadala and Antop Hill on the second and those entering the city from the highway on the third. Also, there are no permanent road dividers leading to utter chaos at the spot.

If a vehicle is able to navigate its way through the junction on its way to the highway, it first descends down a slope and then speeds through a maze of slums which stretch all the way to the highway. The slums have encroached on the roads to such an extent that at times the road takes sharp turn leaving the driver guessing whether people are crossing the road at the other side of the turn.

Stretching over a quarter of a kilometre, pedestrians wanting to cross over do so at their own risk, as Mohammed Ashraf found out on Wednesday. With the hurried construction of four speed-breakers, the traffic has slowed to a certain extent, but the sheer volume of traffic threatens to render these measures of little use.

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Meanwhile, the traffic police strongly denied negligence on their part as alleged by the slum dwellers as well as some officials of the municipal corporation. 8220;Our job is only to regulate traffic, not to build speed-breakers or install traffic signals,8221; claimed Additional Commissioner Traffic S P S Yadav.

He added that a request for a traffic signal at the Barkat Ali junction had been lying with the BMC for some time. 8220;We had also requested the corporation to remove the slums adjoining the road which could disrupt the traffic, but nothing has been done yet,8221; he said. Plans for a foot overbridge at this junction has also been lying in cold storage for some time.

8220;The only solution for the problem is better traffic sense among people,8221; said Yadav calling for better use of pedestrian crossings.