Shifting of 170 bus stops to ease traffic

Hyderabad: Considering the proposal made by the Hyderabad Traffic Police to relocate the bus stops from major junctions in order to reduce traffic jams and smooth flow of traffic, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has accepted to relocate 170 bus stops in the city with an immediate effect. Shifting of bus stops would be carried out in two phases.

In the first phase, 70 bus stops would be shifted with an outlay of Rs 2.8 crore, the GHMC said, adding that the remaining 100 bus stops would be done in the second phase with an expenditure of Rs 4 lakh on each bus stop.An exhaustive study was done by the Traffic Police for about two months to learn about the reasons of traffic jams at various places in the city and a proposal was sent to the GHMC during the last week of August.

The study revealed that 200 existing bus stops were located mostly below 50 meters from the traffic junctions or at the corners of the curves on roads, which were built keeping in view the vehicular traffic conditions about five years ago and some were much older.

A presentation on the same was given to the GHMC containing photographs of traffic jams occurring due to lack of bus bays and halting of buses at the stops located immediately at the traffic junctions and they were also shown the ideal places of relocating the bus stops during the Traffic Police - GHMC meeting.

Acting positively, the GHMC officials accepted the proposal and sanctioned money to relocate as many as 70 bus stops with immediate effect. Contractors were asked to demolish the existing bus stops and built new bus stops at the proposed at the earliest, said DCP (Traffic) A V Ranganath. Relocation of 100 other bus stops would be taken up later,” he said.

The DCP said that in order to reduce traffic jams, bus bays were also created at several places in the limits of 25 traffic police stations in Hyderabad Commissionerate. Earlier, a proposal was submitted to the GHMC to create 900 more bus bays in the twin Commissionerate limits, out which 245 have to be created mandatorily.

At the new bus bays, the traffic personnel concerned were asked to monitor the halting of buses and study the vehicular movement. In coordination with the RTC, regular training programmes were also being organized for the RTC drivers at the Traffic Training Institute in Goshamahal to create awareness on traffic rules, the DCP added.

By:Jayendra Chaithanya T

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