PMC’s road safety audit to cover 1,000 km
Updated: Apr 11, 2018, 10:16 IST
PUNE: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) will be conducting a road safety auditcovering 1,000 km length of roads in the city. The exercise will help the municipal body spot flaws, fix them and ultimately make the city’s roads safer for users.
The standing committee of the civic body approved this proposal on Tuesday.
“The number of deaths and accidents on our city roads should be brought down. The road safety audit will set a course to achieve that. The audit would highlight the more practical issues and the measures to prevent road accidents,” said Yogesh Mulik, the chairman of the PMC standing committee.
As per the PMC official, the Union government has appealed to all the local self-government bodies to conduct these road safety audits.
The civic body has prepared a draft of the road safety audit for some of the key stretches of roads.
An earlier audit has already covered 200-km stretch of roads. Now, the target is to cover a combined length of 1000 km of roads. The work will be taken up in a phased manner — 200-km stretches will be taken up for consideration every year. The key points to be checked in the audit include significant traffic flow, daily pedestrian movement, the frequency of traffic jams and vulnerability to accidents.
An official from PMC’s road department said an agency was appointed to conduct the road safety audit. “The agency has conducted on-field surveys and has visited crucial spots for the first 200 km. The draft report will be sent to the regional transport office (RTO) and the traffic police department. To make the study comprehensive, it is necessary to take opinions from the traffic police and RTO. The same procedure will be used for the remaining 800 km as well,” the official said.
“The objective of the audit was to improve the safety of all road users by preventing accidents rather than reducing them,” the official said.
He said the issues such as roadside encroachments, narrowing of lanes and wrongly-placed signals are likely to be sorted out following the audit. The study will help the civic administration to come up with solutions and make changes in the existing roads as well as the road furniture.
Source : The Times Of India
