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Rural roads need attention Law & order

Large segments of rural and suburban roads in the district were becoming highly accident prone.

Potholed roads, speeding and overloading of vehicles conducting parallel services, ill-lit junctions and poor enforcement of traffic norms were being cited as the main reasons.

A traffic management expert working for the National Transportation Planning and Research Centre said that rural areas accounted for more than 50 per cent of the accident reported in the district annually. He said poor road surface, narrow tarmac, sharp curves, and steep gradients are characteristic of most rural roads. Most of the accidents were reported in the early morning hours.

Long-term solutions for improving the “geometry” of rural roads include straightening of sharp curves, reducing gradients, improving the surfacing and increasing the width of the carriage ways.

Traffic management experts also suggested an outer-ring road system, which would connect suburban locations without passing through city centres, as a sustainable solution for the congested road situation in the district.

They said there was also an urgent need to redesign junctions on rural roads in a scientific manner. Many roads needed to be properly lit and there was a pressing case for carrying out scientific studies of accident prone stretches.

Lack of a dependable mass transport system linking the city and its rural areas, has forced a large segment of the suburban population to depend heavily on jeeps, vans and mini-buses operating parallel services.

Profit motivated parallel service operators often overload their vehicles with passengers and drive at breakneck speeds through rural roads to make as many trips between a given starting point and destination. The fierce competition between van drivers for passengers results in wanton violation of road safety rules and speed limits on rural roads.

The Kerala Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) had received several complaints that a considerable number of vans conducting parallel service in Neyyatinkara, Nedumangadu and Attingal are owned in the name of others (benamis) by certain State government officials, including those in the police and transport departments.

The complainants also alleged that there is a marked reluctance on the part of law enforcers to crackdown on traffic violations by operators in the parallel service segment. In certain rural areas, the police requisition vans used for conducting parallel services, allegedly without paying any compensation, for night patrolling operations.

But certain police officials have dismissed these allegations as baseless. An official said the government’s policy is to allow parallel service operations in rural areas till the KSRTC is able to operate full time on all far flung routes.

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