HYDERABAD: Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB) seems to have woken up to its crammed roads and will soon be taking up widening of some of its main thoroughfares.

Twenty-three important corridors and 12 busy junctions are to get a massive facelift as per its perspective plan.

To begin with, the road stretch from Mastan Point Café to Diamond Point at Sikh village is likely to be widened once the road wise development plan is ready and the Varied Board approves it, said Chief Executive Officer V. Premchand.

Most roads in SCB have varying widths with as little as 25 ft in some places to 100 ft too in some stretches. Authorities are now considering increasing the carriageway of the identified main roads where vehicular movement is heavy to about 120 ft.

Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University's Transportation Department, commissioned to study transport patterns and come out with a plan has recently submitted its `Transportation planning and management strategies in Cantonment' report.

The department has done a detailed road network and traffic characterisation studies ward wise consisting of volume counts, destination surveys, speed studies, road safety audit, land use patterns, priority link roads, present and future demand estimations, etc.

It is now involved in preparing individual road development plans. The report has stated that 52 per cent of road length is between 3.5 mts and 7 mts, 38 per cent is less than 3.5 mts and 7.7 per cent is between seven and 10 mts.

Interesting facts have come to the fore about the travel habits of cantonment people in the study where the average trip length is five kilometres. Seventytwo per cent make daily trips and 62 per cent of those are for work with 17 per cent for business.

Clearly pointing to the woeful lack of proper public transport in the region, 87 per cent travel on private vehicles.

The report has recommended parking be regulated on the main roads, provide service roads at the main corridors, road markings, raised and wide footpaths, foot over bridges wherever traffic density is high for pedestrians benefit. Conversion of land use from residential to commercial should be restricted on busy roads.

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