With the signing of Hyderabad Integrated Traffic Management System (HTRIMS) contract four months ago, most commuters in the twin cities hoped for a hassle-free drive. According to the agreement, the often defunct traffic signals were to be replaced with the hi-tech gadgets that would regulate the traffic on their own. But, even after more than 100 days, the ambitious project costing over Rs.66.50 crore, is still gathering dust.
According to MoU signed with Bharat Electronics on August 18, in the first phase, 90 signal junctions in the city were to be converted to HTRIMS within 140 days. But till date, the only ‘latest’ aspects that motorists could see on city roads are few blue poles erected in certain junctions. A total of 221 junctions in the city and Cyberabad limits were to be converted to latest traffic signalling system.
However, senior officials maintained that the project would take off soon as the initial hiccups have been resolved. Though the contract was time bound with strict penalties, there were a few issues causing delays in rolling out of HTRIMS, Additional CP (Traffic) C.V. Anand admitted.
“While the tender was passed on August 18, we found that the document did not include countdown timers. Without these timers, HTRIMS would be incomplete so reprocessing of these documents took sometime,” he said.
Apart from the timers, the initial tender contained black and white cameras of lower resolution. By spending about Rs.90 lakh, colour cameras with higher resolutions could be procured and this too resulted in the delay, Mr. Anand explained. Another reason contributing for the delay was obtaining permission for cutting the roads.
“There were few problems in obtaining these permissions to lay down the cables. But these issues have been cleared. As the tender process is almost complete and even the permission for road cutting has been obtained, we can hope that project would now gather full steam,” Mr. Anand added.
