Strengthen public transport system to reduce mishaps: DTC

• Says traffic awareness should be created among all sections of people to prevent road mishaps 

Vijayawada: Lack of civic sense has been causing fatal accidents in the country, said Guntur Deputy Transport Commissioner Rajaratnam while addressing a workshop on Pedestrians Safety organised by a civil society organisaton Sudheekshan Foundation here on Saturday.

Underlining the need to strengthen the public transport system, Rajaratnam said that there is need for strong political will power to implement the laws in the country.

Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS) Prof Dr C Ramachandraiah said that in Vijayawada alone 23 per cent of citizens walk to reach their destinations for which they need safety measures. 

Heavily coming down on the road-widening works, the professor said that the road widening is meant for vehicular traffic but not for the pedestrians. 

“The free left model has totally ignored the pedestrians,” he added. Indians have worst civic sense in the world right from walking in the middle of road and spitting wherever they want, he averred.

Addressing the gathering, Traffic ACP Sravan Kumar emphasised on the need to establish a Research and Development division for the city traffic. 

“Police only enforce and streamline the traffic for which the people look at them as their enemies,” he lamented. 

It is the duty of R&B, NH and Panchayat Raj departments who should take care of road engineering, he said and added that the fines collected by the police department from the traffic violators would be deposited in the government treasury.

Dr Y Sudheer Babu, principal of MIC College of Technology, who is a specialist in traffic and transportation, said people should be law-abiding. 

Ridiculing the proposal to construct air-conditioned bus stops in the city, he proposed to construct footbridges with escalators to make it easy for people to cross the roads. 

He said that he prepared the highway capacity manual which could be followed to maintain good traffic system.

Chigurupati Vimala, founder of Sudheekshan Foundation, said that fatal accidents could be avoided if everyone followed traffic rules. She said that she was a victim of such accident in which her son died. 

She appealed to the government to prepare road safety measures for the pedestrians.