Marshals’ alerts to help in easing traffic congestion

The city police have already introduced 35 marshals for this purpose, who have been removed from the control of traffic inspectors and have been attached to the control of the city control room. 

“The idea is to provide live feed to the control room whenever they come across a traffic pile up on city roads. They will pass on the information immediately to the control and traffic cops from the jurisdiction would be sent to ease the pile up,” City Commissioner of Police, S George said.

These traffic marshals will not be bound by jurisdictional limitations and they will be tracking problems across city roads, the official added. The control room will have personnel deputed to track the live feeds provided by the marshals and to re-direct them to the respective traffic wings. 

According to police sources, traffic pile-up on many roads are caused to due to lack of timely intervention by the traffic cops and this system could address this issue. “Traffic is a huge area which needs full co-operation from the motoring public for improvement. As per a rough estimate, nearly 5,000 new vehicles are added to the city roads on a daily basis. Moreover, the road area for motoring has been significantly reduced due to the various transportation construction works happening in the city. So the new initiative is to reduce the traffic congestion through timely intervention,” another traffic official added. 

Officials said, if regular traffic snarls are found in same areas, the traffic policemen under that jurisdiction would be taken to task, another official said. These marshals look no different from a regular traffic cop as there is no difference in their attire and they will be using a regular police bike. 

Similarly, city police have also introduced a new traffic data collection wing with the city intelligence section. “The data provided by the intelligence wing and by the traffic marshals will not be identical. Intelligence section would be analysing the reasons for repeated traffic snarls and will be providing the data to the traffic planning. The planning wing will then identify methods to solve the issue,” the officials added.