Several road accidents in the city in the recent past make one wonder about the role of the city infrastructure in encouraging over-speeding.
While those breaking all speed limits are to be primarily blamed for the bloodshed they cause on the roads, enabling infrastructure created by the civic authorities also comes into question whenever accidents take place.
Going by the two fatal accidents on the Biodiversity flyover within 20 days of its launch, traffic discipline of the average commuter is clearly not commensurate with the eagerness of the authorities to create six-lane and eight-lane roads and signal-free traffic flow through projects such as Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP).
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In the latest incident, the person in the driving seat was reportedly talking on his mobile phone, and did not notice the curve till the car flew into the air and crashed to the ground, killing a hapless woman in the process. Second-by-second analysis of the CCTV camera footage shows that he made no effort to control the speed even till the last moment — the brake lights were not seen flickering at all.
“We put up sign boards indicating the speed limits, for whoever bothers to look up. If the commuters do not even care to look up at the display, there is little we can do,” says a senior engineer of GHMC.
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Installation of speed breakers on the flyover would only be counter productive, and rumble strips will be effective only up to a certain speed, he asserts.
A committee has been created by the government with independent engineers to look into the flyover design. This leaves GHMC officials on a wing and a prayer, as actualisation of the remaining flyovers they are raring to create under SRDP is dependent on the committee’s report. “If the report finds fault with the curve, we would need to rethink quite a few structures, as they are designed with steeper curves,” the engineer says.
Case in point is the proposed elevated corridor between Nalgonda Crossroads and Owaisi Hospital Junction which passes via Chanchalguda, Saidabad, Dobhighat and Santosh Nagar Crossroads, in its 4-km length. It is designed with multiple curves, and steep ones at that. One more example is the flyover proposed between Ramnagar and Baghlingampally via VST junction, which has to take a curve.
Transport engineering expert and professor at JNTU-Hyderabad, K.M. Lakshmana Rao strongly advocates against construction of any more flyovers. Flyovers are internationally passé, as seen from the experience of countries such as South Korea, which has been on a dismantling spree of its elevated expressways, he says.
Creation of unified mobility across the city will solve the issue of over speeding, Prof. Lakshmana Rao says. Hyderabad roads lack in geometrics such as sight distance, sight triangle and turning path, and road frustration is very high among the users, owing to speed differentials, he has analysed. “The frustration levels are high when high-speed vehicles happen to conflict with low-speed vehicles. Whenever a clear stretch is found, the frustration manifests into speed,” he adds.
The city has 10,000 km of road stretch, of which only 500 km experience congestion. However, the ripple effect is also felt on the remaining 9,500 km which are otherwise under utilised. “If we treat this 500 km with unified mobility, by creating separate lanes for high speed, low speed and local vehicular traffic, and introduce signal synchronisation for every 5 km by using computer vision technology, we can subdue user frustration caused by differential speeds,” he says.
The 500-km stretch should be handed over to a single private agency with right of way control, to maintain uniformity and reduce negative externals such as political pressures, Prof. Lakshmana Rao opines.