Cops identify 6 crossings to speed up C Kol traffic
Times of India | 13 April 2025
12 Kolkata:
Cops have identified six major crossings on the Central Avenue stretch, including the Bowbazar, MG Road, Girish Park and Sovabazar crossings, where they are allowing a greater waiting time. However, for other crossings, cops are cutting down cross-over timings (increasing the north-central traffic cycle) and also blocking illegal crossovers.
Police said that office time commute between Rajballabhpara and Medical College — a 3.4 km stretch — will now take 8.5 to 13 minutes. The travelling time here till last month was over 15-17 minutes. Last year, it was brought down to below 10 minutes at certain times of the day, claimed sources. "The permanent signals now bring down travelling time by another 1.5 minutes," said an officer.
The cops have set up two new traffic signals at the Balaram Dey Street-CR Avenue Crossing and Madan Chatterjee Street-CR Avenue Crossing. Besides setting up boom barriers at Madan Mohan Burman Street, personnel are posted round-the-clock to ensure that there are no undue pedestrian and slow-moving vehicle crossovers. More pedestrian lanes and boom barriers are planned between Girish Park and Medical College.
Cops have also technically achieved all green signals, with all signals synchronised to be working on auto mode. "But given the safety of motorists and pedestrians, we are ensuring that we are holding up the traffic after a certain distance to check speeding," said an officer at Lalbazar.
When the auto signals in the city were recalibrated in 2022 after several months of study, cops hoped that some long stretches of the city could help increase their average speed, as a result of which commuters could significantly cut down on travel time.
The work, though, is still not over. The next stretch — between Medical College and Esplanade — will see cops take a few more initiatives regarding pedestrian crossovers before they expect to cut down travelling time further.
The CR Avenue, claimed Lalbazar, is an example of how speed increased in the city despite an increase in personal vehicles, claimed Lalbazar, who carried out a three-month survey across 28 stretches covering almost 150 km of the city. The cops said that this was achieved even after the city recorded a 98% speed compliance through speed cams across multiple locations on CR Avenue.