Traffic signals at 14 major junctions in Ggn are faulty: Report

“Faulty traffic signals in the Millennium City will be repaired soon as the state government has decided to hand over the task to a single agency — the MCG.” This was said three weeks ago, when an issue on non-functional traffic signals was raised in a meeting held with P Raghavendra Rao, additional chief secretary of the department of town and country planning (DTCP) of Gurgaon. 

Following this, a data was gathered from HUDA officials in which it was found that Gurgaon has around 100 traffic signals, of which 55 are at major junctions. Out of these 55, signals at 14 junctions are known to be not functioning properly.

Earlier, repair of faulty signals was done by multiple agencies like Huda, MCG and HSIIDC and every time there was a complaint, a particular agency would repair the signals depending upon their own  jurisdiction of the signal. “The delay in the repair of these traffic signals was because of the confusion regarding their respective jurisdictions and most of the repair was done by Huda or HSIIDC,” said a senior MCG official.

Surprisingly, some of these signals are at the busiest junctions in Gurgaon city, including the one near Medanta Hospital in Sector 38, Kanhai Chowk near Sector 44, CRPF Camp Chowk near Golf Course Extension Road, Wazirabad and Artemis Health Institute in Sector 51.

According to the traffic rule book, the signal changing from red to yellow to green is supposed to change in a span of five seconds each. But it was discovered that at one of the busiest and major junctions near Huda City Centre, the signal had faulty timers where the signal changed from yellow to red in just two seconds, leading to a lot of people getting fined for jumping red lights for no good reason.

Traffic police, who already have a tough time managing heavy flow of vehicles, face a harrowing time with these defective traffic lights. Despite being short-staffed, traffic cops manage such spots manually. However, they accept that it is nearly impossible for the couple of cops posted at major crossroads to manually manage them.

A busy junction at Sector 12, Old Gurgaon Road, is being managed manually by an ASI ranked officer, PR Singh, who face a lot of problems to manage traffic singlehandedly. 

As a result, the office of DCP traffic has decided to raise the issue with Huda and MCG and will be writing to both the agencies.

“We’re compiling a list of faulty traffic lights, in which we’ll mention since when we’ve noticed these lights have not been functioning properly. In the letter, we’ll also mention that there is an urgent need for these to be fixed as winter is approaching, drivers can’t clearly see cops signalling at the junctions, while a light can be spotted from a distance even in the dark,” said DCP (traffic) Balbir Singh.