The city traffic police have prepared a proposal titled Belagavi Traffic Improvement Project (BelTRAC) to technically and professionally improve the traffic conditions here.
City Police Commissioner Ravi said in a release here on Saturday that the city was interspersed on either side of the National Highway 4 connecting Pune and Bengaluru and the NH4A connecting Belagavi and Panaji. This coupled with rapid horizontal expansion has led to a manifold increase in intra-city vehicular traffic in the past few years.
With limited scope for further road-widening, improved traffic management becomes a priority. The severe stress on city’s transportation systems and frequent traffic snarls has led to the necessity of BelTRAC, the release said.
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Under BelTRAC, it had been planned to adopt the Transportation Demand Management methodology where the latest traffic hardware and software would be integrated to make the transportation system more efficient and improve traffic conditions.
Some other objectives of BelTRAC are to reduce traffic congestion by 30 per cent in the central business district and accidents by 30 per cent and achieve significant reduction in pollution levels. Some of the salient features of the project include introduction of mobile governance infrastructure for field level communication and tracking, development of a secured mobile network using EDGE/GPRS, transmitting real-time information to the commuters by the use of variable messaging service facility on roads. The main component of the project was to evolve an intelligent transportation system - a collection of wide-ranging technologies brought together to make traffic management more “intelligent”.
Components of ITS include real-time traffic information, instant control of traffic signals, variable message signs, information processing, transit signal priority and fire pre-emption.
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Besides, it has been planned to set up a traffic management centre, automated signalling system, pedestrian-controlled signal lights, surveillance/monitoring and enforcement systems, surveillance cameras, interceptors and crash labs — a multipurpose vehicle which can conduct accident investigation in addition to road safety surveillance and junction improvements.