Kolkata: Due to increasing amount of vehicular congestion, the Kolkata Traffic Police was compelled to change the EM Bypass signal cycle at both its southern and northern end. At Dhalai Bridge, officers also changed the traffic flow to ensure that north-south movement was not hampered by the sudden increase in vehicle count, especially two-wheelers.
At Dhalai Bridge, vehicles approaching from the Patuli side were stopped by cops from taking a right turn. Instead, they were asked to move forward towards Mahamayatala, then proceed up to Rakshakali Temple, take a U-turn, and then return to the crossing before taking a left turn.
"There are too many vehicles from Garia traversing the Dhalai Bridge since there is no major traffic block there. This was leading to a long tail of vehicles. Hence, we were forced to tweak the movement on an experimental basis a few days ago. After the trials were successful, we implemented the new plan from Monday," said an officer at Lalbazar.
With the volume of traffic now surpassing the pre-Covid era even during non-peak traffic hours, cops engineered some changes to the signal timings — both for peak office hours and late at night — to facilitate the movement of an ever-rising number of vehicles on Bypass.
MaharashtraJharkhandMaharashtraAlliance ViewiParty ViewSeats: 288L + WMajority: 145BJP+229MVA47OTH12Leads + Wins: 288/288BJP+ WONJharkhandAlliance ViewiParty ViewSeats: 81ResultsMajority: 41INDIA56NDA24OTH1Results: 81/81INDIA WONSource: PValueThe opening of educational institutes, the beginning of the wedding season, and a huge shift of population to Southern Bypass have all hastened this signal time engineering, said officers. Similar changes were implemented at the Chingrighata Crossing on EM Bypass, AJC Bose Road and JL Nehru Road Crossing, Cathedral Road and AJC Bose Road Crossing post 10 pm.
Police claimed that it was necessary to make the signalling system dynamic, depending on ground situations like the return of vehicle pressure after the second Covid wave, major constructions in the vicinity, and commercial activity around the area. However, there is a caveat — in order to align each localised signal to the centralised signalling system, officers are not tinkering with the overall traffic cycle timings allotted for each crossing. Instead, they are adjusting the timings of only one or two particular flanks to factor in local issues.
The Kolkata Traffic Police, which has been experimenting with both the centralised and the localised signalling cycles across the city for a long time, has begun a thorough study of traffic cycles across Kolkata, mostly concerning movement during the non-peak traffic hours. To achieve the desired results, officers are increasingly studying each signal at the crossing — a rather localised effort — rather than looking at them in a centralised manner.