The initiative taken up by the police to allow traffic in reverse direction to ease congestion on some busy road stretches seems to be paying dividends. Vehicular traffic is now moving smoothly even on road stretches where its movement was sluggish earlier owing to bottlenecks, authorities claimed.
The situation particularly gets aggravated during peak hours when the traffic movement is more towards one side. While a torrent of vehicles pour into the core city during mornings, traffic mainly flows out of the business district during the evenings, resulting in chaos.
In order to cope up with this persistent problem, the city police have finally hit upon an out-of-box idea by allowing unidirectional traffic on both sides of a road at certain key areas.
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Depending on the traffic flow, police are implementing the concept of ‘Reversible Lane Traffic Method’ at Secunderabad Club, Alugadda Baavi-Rail Nilayam junction, Chaderghat, Malakpet and on Begumpet Flyover during the peak hours.
This practice has been adopted to suit the peculiar road conditions prevailing in the city, Additional Commissioner of police (Traffic) C.V. Anand said. Dubbing the initiative as ‘puncturing the traffic bubble’, Mr. Anand explains that the initiative provides extra lanes for traffic from one side when traffic logjam builds up at particular bottlenecks.
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U.S. model
Inspiration for this idea has come from a practice being followed in USA, Mr. Anand said.
“The road between Connecticut and New York experiences similar unidirectional traffic flow with motorists pouring into New York City during mornings and returning to Connecticut during evenings. Road dividers on this route are shifted twice a day to provide extra lanes for the busier side,” Mr. Anand explained.
As the road dividers in the city cannot be shifted and road widening is beyond traffic regulators’ scope, the idea of allowing reverse traffic came handy for them. The idea has proved workable for the city traffic as there is no need to develop additional infrastructure for implementing it, he said.
“Ideally, all the bottlenecks on the city roads should be removed to create an easier way for the vehicles. But till that time, we are using the concept of reversible traffic as an ad hoc measure,” Mr. Anand added.