JOIN USCity traffic near impossible to handle: Parameshwara
Home Minister G Parameshwara on Tuesday expressed helplessness with regard to regulating the burgeoning traffic in the city.
Replying to a query by JD(S) member K Gopalaiah in the Assembly, Parameshwara said there were 3,200 traffic police personnel who were manning 61 lakh vehicles every day. There are 42 lakh two-wheelers, 12 lakh cars, 48,000 buses, 1.14 lakh lorries and 3.21 lakh other vehicles registered in the city.
Though all measures had been put in place like road widening, construction of underpasses and flyovers, the department is finding it very difficult to regulate the traffic. This was because every day, 1,000 to 2,000 vehicles were being registered.
“When such is the situation, it’s near impossible to manage the traffic. The department is also looking at ways to regulate the number of registrations,” he said.
The minister said that 300 new CCTVs would be installed at traffic junctions to monitor traffic movement live. Already, 189 CCTVs are in place at important junctions.
Parameshwara said that recently 2,800 police were recruited for Bengaluru city, among whom, 845 of them had been diverted to traffic department. He said the number of accidents had come down by 45% over the last few years. He said while 10,505 accidents had been recorded in 2003, in 2015, it had come down to 4,828, which he said was the only silver lining.
“Managing traffic is our biggest challenge. Even during the global investors meet, this was a much talked-about issue. The department is trying its best to address it,” he added.
Vacancies in Basavanagudi
Replying to a question by BJP member Ravi Subramanya (Basavanagudi), Parameshwara said efforts were on to restructure police stations scientifically, to reduce the distance from one station to another. He said there were 25,000 vacancies in the police department, and that 16,000 personnel had been recruited and were in the process of being trained. To address the dearth of staff in the department, he said there would be continuous recruitments in the next three years.
Conceding that there were vacancies in the police stations in Basavanagudi Assembly constituency, Parameshwara said 152 vacancies would be filled by November.