Bus bays to make Salt Lake safer

Separate 'bus bays' will be made, demarcated by yellow lines, on the main roads of Salt Lake to avoid unwanted traffic congestion and accidents.

The bus bays will be separated with yellow lines alongside the pavements on which people wait for buses to arrive.

The Bidhannagar City Police recently planned to introduce more such bus bays to enhance road safety and initiated the work to demarcate lanes for the designated bays on some of the roads of the area. The top brass of the city police believe that this would reduce the pressure on traffic management and decrease the number of accidents.

Several private buses and state government-run low floor AC and non-AC buses regularly ply through Salt Lake.

However, buses often stop in the middle of the roads rather than at the bus stops, which lead to traffic jams and increase the risk of accidents. Thus, the traffic planners decided to solve the problem by demarcating separate bus bays on the roads.

"There is not much traffic pressure in Salt Lake except during the rush hours. It will not be a tough job for bus drivers to drive their vehicles in the bus bays and drop passengers at the designated bus stops. The new bus bays will only be a small part of the road. The other part, which is bigger in size, will be open for other vehicles," said a police source.

The city police had a few months ago also introduced lane driving for the first time in Salt Lake. Roads were divided into three lanes and transgressing them would lead to punishment for the driver. There are, however, no specific lanes for specific vehicles. The idea for bus bays came after lane driving was introduced in Salt Lake.

"Buses will run on the bus bays and pick up passengers from the bus stops only," said Sudhakar, DC (Headquarters) Bidhannagar City Police.

The increasing numbers of road accidents in Salt Lake have prompted the city police to come up with a comprehensive plan of action. A high-level meeting among the senior officers at Bidhannagar Commissionerate came up with the idea to restrict erroneous driving through strong norms – the violation of which by drivers could lead to heavy penalties.

The plan of action includes the installation of surveillance cameras on the roads, radar speed guns to check the speed of passing vehicles, demarcation bus bays, lane driving, automatic traffic signals, SOS systems at traffic poles, special night patrol vans for catching errant drivers and motor bikers, speed limits for different vehicles, etc.

Salt Lake, which falls under the jurisdiction of Bidhannagar City Police, was free of traffic signals in most of the areas for years. Traffic signals at frequent intervals were introduced between the period of 2005 and 2010. Signals were installed at major roads and crossings but they were often out of order or defective.

Salt Lake roads were not safe for a walk at night even a few years ago. The cars, without abiding by the signals, often mowed down unsuspecting pedestrians at night. Many such incidents were reported during the early morning hours when unidentified vehicles hit elderly people taking a walk.

But things have changed in recent times. The traffic policemen are more vigilant along with civic police volunteers who control the vehicular traffic. Automatic

Traffic Signals were installed to check the traffic in all the important crossings.