Motorists in the city are a confused lot since Friday, as majority of the traffic signals, especially on the National Highway, working went dark.
This resulted in a lot of confusion and technical snags and unavailability of operator at the time are reasons cited by the police.
At present there are about 47 signals at equal number of junctions, of the total proposed 94. The signals are yet to be integrated to the central command centre and each of them functions independently. According to a senior police officer, there was some technical problem in about seven or eight of them, from Venkojipalem to Thatchetlapalam, and all of them incidentally took place on the NH and at the same time. Important junctions in the city on National Highway-16, Isukathota, Maddilapalem, Satyam Junction, Gurudwara, Akkayyapalem, RTC complex junction, Thatichetlapalem and a few more were seen not functioning and traffic policemen were seen manning the junctions manually.
However, sources in the police said the provider who was allotted the contract on BOT (build-operate-transfer) basis was having some problem with the GVMC and work on the automated smart signals and CC TV has come to a standstill.
It is learnt that the operator under contractual obligation is entitled to erect advertisement boards and sell them to the advertisers, but a stay order from other hoarding companies has put the work under hold.
However, both ADCP (Traffic) K. Mahendra Patrudu and ACP (Traffic) Kinjarapu Prabhakar, said the signals will be rectified soon.
