Lucknow traffic: Vehicles run with just one-third cop strength monitoring
Lucknow faces severe traffic issues due to inadequate road planning and insufficient traffic police, with only 1,250 officers for nearly 2.1 million vehicles.
The state capital is beset with traffic woes and experts attribute it to the city’s planning (or lack of), fewer wide roads relative to the city’s ever-growing number of vehicles. Another cause they enumerate is fewer traffic officials, necessary to control traffic.
According to the Lucknow traffic department’s current data, the present number of traffic cops is only 1,250 in the city. However, out of 1250, 250 have recently been incorporated but are yet to join the fleet. “We had 1,000 traffic cops, 250 will join soon,” said Lucknow’s deputy commissioner of police (traffic), Prabal Pratap Singh.
He agreed, “The number of personnel is far fewer than required.”
Against 1,000 traffic cops in the city, the number of vehicles running in the state capital is nearly 21 lakhs. As per RTO’s latest data, the number of current vehicles (all motor vehicles/e-rickshaws) on the streets is 20,77,415.
‘Three times force required’
A senior officer who had previously headed the traffic department requesting anonymity said, “From the current number of traffic personnel which is around nearly 1,200, is too little for Lucknow. The current requirement is at least 3,000 traffic personnel. The present strength needs to increase three times, and a proposal to this effect was sent to the government.”
The officer further said that the strength of 3,000 personnel was calculated when multiple points were selected for new traffic duties or increase in duties and some old points needed to be strengthened.
According to the officer, Gomti Nagar, Sushant Golf City, BBD and many more in the south and east zones have few or no traffic police at all which are then managed by the city police’s home guards. “In Old Lucknow too, many points need to be covered. We don’t have a traffic man there and even if there are at some point they are too few,” he added.