Now, traffic police to tackle signals manually during peak hours

Kolkata: In a bid to avoid congestion, Commissioner of Kolkata Police Soumen Mitra has instructed the officer-in-charge of all traffic guards to keep signals in manual mode during peak hours.

The police personnel on duty have been asked to regulate the vehicular movement manually during such hours. The decision was taken as automatic operation of the traffic signals during rush hours led to jams. The tech-enabled jam-busting measures are often slow to detect the changes on the road.

Commissioner, Traffic, Arijit Sinha said: "Police personnel deployed in the field have been asked to decide about running the traffic signals in manual mode depending on the volume of the traffic to avoid unnecessary halt of the

cars. This does not mean that the signals will not run in automatic mode anymore. It will be changed to manual from automatic and vice-versa, as per requirement."

For the past few years, the traffic signals across the city used to be operated using automatic mode. Though traffic cops were deputed in their respective beats daily, they had no work other than to look after the movements in case any intervention was needed. In case of heavy traffic, major traffic congestion used to occur as after a certain period of time the signals used to change.

In many occasions, it was seen that a good number of vehicles had to stop due to the red light while no vehicular movement was spotted in the lane with green light.

Often, it is seen that due to the automatic traffic signal, people going to work get late.