The spurt in residential colonies in and around Kukatpally along with complementary growth of commercial activities has ended up unveiling a traffic nightmare on the highway stretch between Moosapet and JNTU campus.
From early hours of each day till very late into the night, the stretch that branches out into connectivity for a horde of residential colonies apart from linking to suburbs and major outside destinations such as Mumbai, Pune, Bidar, and Gulbarga, turns out to be a case of mismanaged location in terms of traffic.
Highly accident prone, the stretch despite its wide span ends up with long traffic snarls and slowing down the speed of vehicles and at times reducing them to a snail's pace.
The Comprehensive Transportation Study (CTS) for the Hyderabad Metropolitan Area has taken up Kukatpally Housing Board (KPHB) as one of the traffic management areas. And the field surveys as part of this exercise came out with a detailed understanding of the area and problems that plague it in terms of traffic management.
The surveys document average journey speed and it shows vehicular speed dipping to as low as 13 kmph between Metro to Nizampet Junction while the highest possible was found to be 26 kmph between Nizampet Junction to Ram Naresh Colony.
The traffic volume at junctions tabulated in the form of Passenger Car Units (PCU) shows it to be 7,567 PCUs/hour at JNTU Junction and 6,006 PCUs/hour at Nizampet Junction. When traffic volume was checked at various mid-blocks in the area, it showed 5,806 two-wheelers and 1,708 cars per hour between ‘Metro' and KPHB while it was 4,678 two-wheelers and 1,709 cars between KPBH Bus Stop and JNTU.
The CTS field surveys report took up the task of identifying initial problems and incorporated the same in its documentation. These problems point out location of many commercial shops along the service road adjacent to main Mumbai road and that the service road was about one metre lower level than the main road.
The two were not well connected and designated parking spaces and pedestrian facilities to serve the commercial strip along the service road, were absent. It also noted that the pedestrians have to fend for themselves ‘risking their lives'.
