Police go shopping for bigger tow away cranes

Size does matter. Especially for Delhi Traffic Police, which has embarked on a shopping spree for bigger cranes to tow away sports utility vehicles and even container trucks, reports Nivedita Khandekar.

Size does matter. Especially for Delhi Traffic Police, which has embarked on a shopping spree for bigger cranes to tow away sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and even container trucks.

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Presently, with only three big cranes (10 tonnes) at their disposal, traffic personnel have restrictions on towing away bigger vehicles, specially the SUVs parked in an unauthorised manner.

Among other cranes are 13 medium cranes (8 tonnes) and about 75 small ones for the entire Delhi. Of these, Delhi Traffic Police owns some and hires the rest.

Now with bigger cranes at hand, the traffic police will start towing away and lifting all vehicles parked obstructively or in ‘no parking zones’ to maintain parking discipline.

“This will avoid unnecessary traffic jams, prevent accidents and, most important, provide smooth flow of vehicles,” said a senior traffic official.

With bigger cranes, traffic police will also be able to tow away, or at least remove from the middle of the road, broken down commercial vehicles and even containers. Daily, at least 10-15 broken down commercial vehicles are found occupying large space in the middle of the road when they ply on city roads at night.

But cranes sometimes fall short of requirement, leading to a bottleneck on that particular stretch. With more bigger cranes however, even these problems will be taken care of.

The department has on Thursday floated an Expression of Interest for purchase/hire of cranes for different weight categories like luxury passenger cars (14-23 tonnes), SUVs (14-22 tonnes), heavy trucks and goods vehicles (laden 16-25 tonnes) and container trucks (20-40 tonnes), officials said.

“After following the mandatory procedures, we hope to acquire these cranes by year end,” said traffic chief SN Srivastava.