Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Bus stops at major points pose problems

Bus stops located close to road-junctions and traffic signals are a major cause of chaotic traffic, writes V.S. Palaniappan

While the law-enforcing agency is going every extra mile possible to streamline traffic in the city, the location of bus stops, especially those close to traffic signals and road-junctions, is playing spoilsport.

Traffic management in any growing urban ambience is governed by three `E's - Education, Enforcement and Engineering. Focussing merely on education and enforcement has not yielded the desired result and there is a lot that needs to be done in engineering in terms of planning the location of bus stops.

Road Safety-cum-Traffic Advisory Committee meeting under the chairmanship of District Collector has resolved many a time to get such bus stops relocated. These decisions have never been implemented owing to lack of co-ordination and initiative among the departments concerned, the president of Coimbatore Consumer Cause (CCC), C.R. Rajkanth, lamented.

Only when The Transport Department, Traffic Police and the TNSTC come together, a solution could be hammered out. Location of a bus stop ahead of a traffic signal and a road junction results in the entire traffic behind getting blocked. At such traffic signals, when there is a green signal the drivers tend to skip the bus stops and stop only after crossing the signal. This causes inconvenience to passengers waiting at such bus stops. This has also given room for a `culture' wherein the passengers tend to board and get down from buses at traffic signals resulting in accidents. To save time and get through the signal, the bus crew promote this `culture', M. Govinda Rao, vice-president of CCC said.

In such bus stops when more than two buses halt at the same time, the entire traffic behind gets blocked. Some of the problematic bus stops are located at Lawley Road Junction, Sai Baba Colony - Sivananda Colony Junction on Mettuppalayam Road, LIC Signal, UMS Signal, Lakshmi Mills Junction, Hopes College Signal, Uppilipalayam and Gandhipuram. Only in a very few places such as Nanjappa Road and Nellai Lala Junction on Raja Street, the authorities have got them relocated. In cases where the bus stops had been relocated, the compliance by the crew needs to be continuously monitored , consumer activists said. They pointed out that there were at least 40 such bus stops and the need of the hour was that the traffic advisory committee should constitute a task force to identify such bus stops and get them relocated.

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