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“We are manually policing traffic movement in the capital these days as all traffic lights barring the one at Koteshwar need repair or perhaps replacement,” said Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police Bigyan Raj Sharma, who heads the Metropolitan Traffic Police Division.[break]
“Over six hundred of our men are policing traffic on the streets of the capital every day with no lights to assist them. If traffic policing could go electronic, we could free half of them for regular policing assignments and traffic movement would be way smoother than what it is,” added Sharma.
Drivers can easily miss or pretend to miss hand signals of traffic police personnel and this can upset road traffic flow. On the other hand, there is no excuse for missing the conspicuous traffic light signals. “That would lead to less road indiscipline and smoother traffic flow,” explained Sharma.
The culprit
Majority of the traffic lights in the capital -- there are 12 of them, excluding the one at Koteshwar -- were built during times when power cuts were not a day-to-day reality. The oldest among the existing lights -- the one at Thapathali -- was installed almost 20 years ago, according to the Department of Roads (DoR).
Though the lights were state-of-the-art at the time they were installed under Japanese assistance, and also very well-placed, they lacked strong power back-ups to survive crippling power cuts the country has been facing for the past couple of years.
“The lights had small power backups that hardly suffice in today´s conditions,” said Chandra Kumar Subedi, chief of DoR´s Traffic Unit that looks after planning and maintenance of traffic lights. “Consequently, the lights have malfunctioned,” Subedi added.
Even during months like the current one when electricity supply is better, the Japanese-built lights have not been brought into operation as technicians at DoR lack the know-how to fix the lights.
Six years ago, solar panels were set up to power traffic lights at Baneshwar, Singha Durbar, Durbar Marg and Gaushala. But there was no maintenance work and the panels stopped working.
Subedi claimed that DoR is working on a plan to equip each of the malfunctioning traffic lights with powerful back-up batteries recharged by solar panels.
“The plan it to place the batteries underground and the panels atop structures near the lights,” said Subedi.
More traffic lights, please!
DIG Sharma says merely repairing the existing lights would not suffice to ease road traffic flow and relieve his division.
“Apart from bringing the existing lights back into operation, we need to install traffic lights at 25 more intersections of the capital to deal with 475,000 two-wheelers and about 150,000 other vehicles registered in Bagmati zone that mostly operate in the capital,” Sharma said.
“With all these lights in place and proper timing separation among them, the capital´s traffic flow can become a lot smoother,” he added.
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