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Sunday , 24 March 2024

“It is high time we adopt technology ”

JitenderJitender, Inspector General of Police and ACP, Traffic Police, Hyderabad City feels adaptive signaling system is a basic requirement for any city. He also tells Vidyottama Sharma that Hyderabad City is coming up with automated violation management system, and that non-contact challan system has improved public trust in the traffic police’s work.

What technologies displayed at the Expo can be useful to the city of Hyderabad?

I visited almost all the stalls and found that most of the stalls displaying various technologies were very relevant to traffic departments across the country. I found ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) in some stalls and surveillance related solutions for traffic enforcement in others. While quite a few stalls were about parking management in the cities, many offered solutions for the infrastructure aspects of the traffic. Many dealt with solutions for prevention of road accidents and road crashes. I found the Expo to be quite useful for the people as every solution is assembled at one place. Everyone can come and see what technology is available in our country and adopt the one that suits their needs.

“We all understand that the job of a traffic policeman on city roads is very difficult. He faces pollution, honking and a lot of dust. He also has to stand in the sun and in downpour. All this spoils his health. Moreover, we have seen that when we adopt technology, compliance by the commuters is much higher than when a policeman stands on the street. Acceptability of technology is very high.

There were stalls by BEL and C-DAC which also made a presentation about the adaptive signaling system. I personally feel that for any city, adaptive signaling system is a very basic requirement. I would say a very basic requirement, because most of the cities in our country do not have this adaptive signaling even today. And that includes the metros. Then what does one say about the smaller cities! Luckily, in Hyderabad, the government of Telangana has made a huge investment and we have adaptive signaling system. We are lucky that all the signals in Hyderabad – in the GHMC limits, the municipal limits — have adaptive technology.

The central control and command centre (CCC) helps us in controlling all the signals as we wish or as per the requirement of the traffic. Once the Government of India had announced that no traffic should move on the 30th of January – the Martyrs Day, at any of the junctions. So, because we had the technology, all the signals in the city were turned to red at 11 o’clock for two minutes just by the click of a mouse. That is the beauty of adaptive signaling system and having a central command and control facility. The best part is that lot of emission and wastage of time on city roads can be reduced if we adopt such a good and very, very progressive signaling system.

So you already have some state-of-the-art technologies installed in Hyderabad…

We have initiated an Intelligent traffic management system (ITMS) project for Hyderabad city. We are coming up with all automated violation management systems which means we have put analytics for all violations like over-speeding, signal jumping, wrong side driving and rash driving. It is under execution by L&T and we believe that the focus of police force from now onwards should be towards the adoption of technology and reducing manpower.

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