Elderly pedestrians rue lack of traffic signals

Bangalore City

Some of the major circles in Jayanagar,lack traffic signals. This leads to uneven flow of traffic and causes inconvenience for elderly pedestrians while crossing the roads.

By Vivek Kumar M

Manjunath, a 58-year old who was trying to cross the road near Jayanagar traffic police station said, “There is no signal or foot over bridge here. It is difficult to move on the roads.”

On the circles where five roads join, there are no traffic signals. Around 65 cases of accidents are reported at Jayanagar traffic police station. Approximately 15 people are reported to be killed and an additional of 10 injured.

Javaregowda, a traffic police inspector, said, “In some circles, signals are not installed. There are certain cases where distance between two circles might be less than 500 metres and the law says there cannot be two signals within such distance.”

He added that Jayanagar traffic police have sent a letter to authorities to install traffic signals, but in vain.

Sameer, an urban planner from Centre for Urban and Rural Infrastructure Planning (CURIPe), said that effective measures should be taken by the authorities to ease the movement of citizens.

He said, “If the distance between two busy circles is less than 500 metres, other ways of controlling traffic need to be looked. They can make the roads one-way and divert the traffic to other road, if that is the case.”

For people like Manjunath it is even more difficult to cross roads during peak hours. Hoping that the authorities take steps to ease traffic, Manjunath said, “It will be helpful for everyone if the vehicles’ movement is in control. Even traffic police officials would not need to stand and control traffic.”

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