Lane discipline to be enforced soon

The City Police will enforce lane discipline in all the major junctions of the City in a phased manner, within six months.

The traffic police are studying certain keys areas to make arrangements to implement the drive systematically.

Speaking to Deccan Herald Additional Commissioner of Police (traffic & security) M A Saleem said: “Bangalore does not stand anywhere close to Mumbai in terms of lane discipline which is the best in the country.

The City is now competing with Chennai, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Kolkata to improve lane discipline. We have taken up the project to reduce the congestion on roads and all major junctions will be covered by the end of the year.”

Saleem said It takes a lot of time and energy to ensure lane discipline due to many physical barriers. It is too early to comment on the response. Police are concentrating on creating awareness for a month on lane discipline after which the violators will be booked,  he added.

The implementation of the the rule will reduce the traffic congestion by 15 to 20 per cent,  bringing down the number of non fatal accidents, Saleem said. The traffic police have begun to demarcate lanes and install road safety cones, especially in critical areas.


Rubber safety cones have been installed on a few critical junctions which will be replaced with permanent metallic cones after a month.

“The metallic road safety cones will prevent the entry of two-wheelers and the road users will eventually get used to the arrangement. Alternative measures will be introduced in the area where the cones are not installed,”  Saleem stated.

The amount of penalty may differ depending on the extent of the violation. Traffic Police will collect the data from three sources – enforcement cameras on a few roads, digital cameras with the policemen and CCTV footage at various junctions.

The data will be transferred to the Automation Centre at Utility Building after which the police will go through the data, generate a notice and send it to the violators. The violators will have to immediately pay the penalty if a traffic sub-inspector of police is available on the spot or can respond to the notice.

The implementation of lane discipline seems to have increased the workload on traffic police.

“We are extremely over burdened due to diverse duties at present. We are unable to cope with the increasing congestion. We are expected to perform many duties simultaneously which is extremely difficult.

Things will improve if additional policemen are deployed on the roads,” a few traffic policemen said. A few road-users said they are unable to understand the drive and suggested the police to publicise it and felt that it may not work well at a few junctions as they are extremely congested.