THE PROMISE: One will be able to zoom past the six junctions on the ever-busy road without hassles. Photo: Ch. Vijaya Bhaskar

VIJAYAWADA: Imagine zooming past in your car or two-wheeler on Mahatma Gandhi Road from Police Control Room to Benz Circle, or in the reverse direction, in just six minutes without ever stopping at any of the six traffic junctions even during peak hour. Sounds incredible, right?

But this can be a reality, if the city police and the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) succeed in implementing their joint action plan for improving the traffic junctions and synchronising them with one another.

The plan envisages that if the signal light at either end of the three-kilometre-long stretch turns green, the remaining signals too will show the same till the end of the stretch. All that the vehicle drivers need to do is to maintain a uniform speed of 30 km per hour till the end of the stretch.

Development

Taking a cue from metropolitan cities like Chennai and Bangalore, where signal lights have been synchronised much earlier, the city police and the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) have chalked out a plan to implement the same in the city and have chosen the ever-busy Mahatma Gandhi road for a trial.

As part of this, traffic junctions at Hotel D.V. Manor, Chennupati petrol station and Veterinary Hospital will be renovated one after the other before being synchronised. City-based software firm Efftronics Systems Private Limited has come forward to sponsor the traffic lights for the junctions, while the VMC will take up the engineering work.

Planning

"The planning part is nearing completion and we are estimating the budget now," says Police Commissioner C.V. Anand. He says importance will be given to `free left' while renovating the traffic junctions and inconvenience to road users will be reduced. "Bad engineering is a major problem with these junctions. After competing the renovation of NTR Circle at Patamata, we will take up similar work at the remaining junctions," he says.

The VMC will play a major role in implementation of the synchronisation project, whose implementation depends much on the completion of widening of Mahatma Gandhi Road.

"We cannot take up this project till the completion of widening work. Once the project succeeds, we will extend it up to Autonagar Gate in the second phase," Mr. Anand reveals.

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