The vicinity of the traffic police station at Pattom here resembles a vehicles’ cemetery. Dozens of light motor vehicles, vans, lorries, trucks, and buses, which meet with accidents are seized by the police and dumped on the opposite side of this office, squeezing out road space.
One major casualty is the works on the Pattom-Medical College-Ulloor corridor, under the City Road Improvement Project (CRIP). Though major works such as laying of the roads on the corridor had been completed, the Thiruvananthapuram Road Development Company Limited (TRDCL), the concessionaire of the CRIP, had not been able to take up the works on the footpath in front of the traffic police station.
Constraints
“We can take up the work only if the vehicles are removed from the shoulders of the road. Parking will not be allowed on the footpath once the tiles are laid since fuel dripping from the dented vehicles will damage the tiles. If vehicles are dumped on the roadside for long, water collected under them will damage the smooth-surfaced bitumen roads. As it is a 15-year maintenance contract, the concessionaire will have to bear the cost,” a TRDCL official told The Hindu.
The requests made by the TRDCL to the traffic authorities to remove the dumped vehicles had not got a favourable response.
“They say that they are ready to temporarily remove the vehicles to lay the tiles, develop footpath and install road signages,” the TRDCL official said.
The TRDCL has decided not to place medians on the 300-metre stretch in front of the traffic police station for the time being.
A decision on whether to develop the footpath and lay the tiles in the stretch will be taken soon.
Road to hospital, school
The cluster of vehicles blocks not just road work, but also road users. The road leads to hospitals, including the Medical College, and houses KSEB headquarters and a school.
As the road tapers towards Pattom, the traffic too begins to crawl.
A traffic police official said the vehicles were being dumped on the roadside for want for a spacious yard on the police station premises.
Solutions
Also, the vehicles cannot be released before the mandatory test by the Motor Vehicles Department and completion of other formalities.
A proposal to bifurcate the north and south traffic sub-divisions and to shift the south sub-division from Pattom to Killippalam is still confined to paper.
