LG reviews Delhi’s traffic issues

Lieutenant governor VK Saxena held a meeting to review the worsening traffic situation in the Capital on Thursday and directed the traffic police to increase visibility and presence of personnel on roads, ensure adherence to bus lanes and deploy dedicated teams at congestion points to ensure smooth traffic flow, among other things, officials from the LG secretariat said.
Saxena met officials from the transport department and the city traffic police and expressed concern over illegal parking on roadsides and flyovers, especially by buses that cause inconvenience to commuters and compromise road safety, apart from increasing pollution caused by vehicular emission, the officials added.
“Traffic police shall constitute joint teams with the transport department to check overloading of commercial vehicles and overcrowding of passenger buses. Traffic police shall identify vulnerable points of traffic congestion and deploy dedicated teams to ensure smooth flow of traffic on those roads,” some of the directions issued by the LG said.
The traffic police, which was earlier directed to put together a system where challans can be issued on WhatsApp, was directed to expedite the process, the LG secretariat said.
“This will provide timely information about the challans to violators and provide them with the facility to pay challan anywhere and anytime. It will also increase the rate of realisation of challans. Another instruction by the LG was the installation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras to fetch information on traffic violations and consequent issuance of challans through SMS and WhatsApp and its realisation without human interface. Integrating the requirements of traffic police in this project is also essential for better coordination between both departments and to avoid duplicity of work,” the official quoted above added.
LG Saxena also instructed authorities to conduct joint drives to ensure compliance with PUC certification, impound illegal e-rickshaws plying on roads and carry out special drives for bus lane enforcement, especially on Ring Road, Airport Road and the national highway stretches.
The official added that two long-term projects were also reviewed by the LG — he asked the transport department to submit the plan to shift ISBT Kashmere Gate and present an action plan to implement Parking Policy along with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and traffic police.