It’s wrong to blame only the traffic police
HT spoke with S.S. Deswal on Gurgaon’s traffic problems.
Do you have plans to decongest the crossings notorious for traffic jams?
We have called a multi-agency meeting of the officials of NHAI, HUDA, MCG, the DSC to discuss the issue. Traffic management is not the responsibility of the police department alone. The civic and development agencies also need to understand their responsibility of providing infrastructure in terms of widening of the roads, construction of footpaths, slip roads and bus queue shelters.
Number of constables and marshals manning crossings is too few. Why?
There is a general misconception in the minds of the people that traffic management is the sole responsibility of the traffic police department. Even if we double or triple the number of cops on the crossings, the problem of jams is going to continue because the crossings and service roads are narrow and need to be widened. The slip roads are non-existent at several places.
Why don’t you segregate the flow of slow vehicles from the ones that move faster?
We’ve already done that. To reduce traffic in service lanes we don’t prohibit the 2- and 3-wheelers from plying on main carriageway of the expressway.