CM Devendra Fadnavis bats for hi-tech fix to Mumbai’s traffic snarls

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday said the state government will develop an ‘intelligent traffic management system (ITMS) for Mumbai’, which will later be implemented across Maharashtra to reduce congestion and increase traffic speed.

This comes as the city , with a vehicular population of 36 lakh and construction work on roads, struggles with traffic snarls and increasing accidents.

Fadnavis said by analysing people’s habits, traffic offences and traffic pattern, the state will develop a system which could be complementary to people’s habits. “Using sensors, if the signal intelligently decides that it is okay to give a green signal to vehicles in case of less traffic, it would help improve the traffic speed,” Fadnavis said. The CM was speaking at launch of the 29th Road Safety Fortnight at Sahyadri guest house.

The state is celebrating a road safety fortnight between April 23 and May 7. Joint commissioner of Mumbai police (traffic), Amitesh Kumar, said they have already appointed a full-time consultant for developing ITMS for Mumbai. He also said Mumbai is the first city to successfully implement e-challan system in India.

It will be implemented across Maharashtra for which the state sanctioned Rs60 crore. Transport minister Diwakar Raote said more accidents could occur on the proposed Mumbai-Nagpur highway that is designed with a speed limit of 150kmph. The CM responded saying intelligent systems will be developed for making the proposed roads accident-free. “Such intelligent highways exist in other parts of the world where accidents rarely take place,” he said.

The CM also advocated the three ‘E’ strategy. “This [accidents] can be reduced down by using three ‘E’s – enforcement, engineering and education,” he said. Fadnavis said the number of road accidents in Maharashtra dropped by 4.5% and 10% in the financial year 2016-17 and 2017-18 respectively because of road safety measures taken.

In 2017, there were 35,853 accidents in the state, where 12,264 people died while 32,128 were seriously injured. Maharashtra ranks third in terms of accidental deaths in India. Raote expressed concern over growing vehicular population. The number of vehicles in the state has now touched 3.28 crore.