Auto lanes on all major roads in City

The Police Commissioner has issued a notification making it mandatory for autorickshaws to move on the extreme left lane on all the major roads in the City.

The decision comes in the wake of the signal countdown timer at four junctions in the Central Business District (CBD) reducing by 15-30 seconds because of strict implementation of autorickshaw lanes.

Encouraged by the success of decongesting vehicular traffic by introducing exclusive auto lanes on a few roads, Police Commissioner M N Reddi on November 20 had issued a fresh notification extending it to a few more roads. Accordingly, autorickshaws will have to travel along the left-most lane on the roads which have lane stripes.

Similarly, on roads with two-three lanes, traffic police will have to ensure autorickshaws travel on the left-most lane. Autorickshaws will merge with the other traffic 50 metres before a junction to take either left or right lane and also at a pedestrian crossing or a bus shelter.

The dedicated auto lane was introduced on a trial basis on four stretches – Kasturba Road between Hudson Circle and Siddalingaiah Circle (0.8 km); Queen’s Road between Queen’s statue and CTO Junction (0.6 km); Sheshadri Road between Anand Rao Circle flyover and Maharani College Underpass (1 km) and Nanda Talkies Road between South End Circle and Rajalakshmi Junction (2 km).

Reddi said that based on the public response and the effect on the total cycle of signal countdown timing, it was decided to have auto lanes on all major roads.

“As per the study, autorickshaws are the slowest-moving vehicles on the city roads with an average speed of 40 km per hour. However, in reality, they travel at 20 km per hour.
One of the main reasons for slow-moving traffic is slow-moving vehicles right ahead of fast-moving vehicles. There are around 1.36 lakh autorickshaws plying on the City roads, while the number of other vehicles is around 50 lakh. We found that a separate lane for the slowest-moving vehicles can yield 15-20 per cent improvement in traffic flow,” Reddi told Deccan Herald.

Cars move at an average speed of 60 km per hour and vehicles other than autorickshaws move at 50 km per hour, he said.

The traffic police say that at the CTO Junction, Queen’s Junction and Nanda Talkies Junction, the traffic signal countdown timers had been reset. “We have been able to reduce the countdown by 15-30 seconds at these signals. The reduced cycle time at these junctions has been found to be working well. We will start implementing auto lanes on other roads from this month,” DCP Traffic (East) M N Baburajendra Prasad said.

Autorickshaw drivers, meanwhile, are not happy with the arrangement as the narrow lanes are potholed and difficult to navigate on many roads. One such example is the stretch running along Kanteerava Stadium (from Hudson Circle).

Some roads are also badly lit and commuters do not want to take the risk of travelling along the lane at night, they point out. It served little purpose as the lane ends ahead of junctions where all the traffic merge, they added.