Project to install high-speed traffic cameras fails to take off

April 16, 2014

Hindustan Times (Delhi)

Subhendu Ray

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Traffic Police had mooted a grand plan of installing speed cameras at the city’s busy intersections to nab motorists flouting rules as well as bringing down the number of fatal accidents on the roads.

SONU MEHTA / HT -Delhi traffic police want to set up 8 high-speed cameras in two accident prone zones to track and nab offenders.Three years on, however, the plan continues to remain on paper with the traffic police force once again missing the March deadline for implementation of the project.

Sources said in 2012 that the traffic police had come up with a plan to install 70 infrared-based speed cameras at the busy city intersections in order to identify and nab speeding motorists.

The plan, however, was later scrapped as the ministry of home affairs did not approve it.

Later, due to a ‘funds crunch’, the traffic police had scaled down their demand and come up with a fresh plan to instead eight such high-speed cameras and install them at the city’s two accident-prone zones at Kingsway Camp and Aurobindo Marg by March 2014.

However, the ` 2.25 crore project again got stuck during its technical evaluation phase.

“We had plans to install the cameras by the last financial year but the tender process got stuck during the technical evaluation. The whole process of finalising the bidder may take a few more months,” stated Taj Hassan, special commissioner of police (traffic).

Sources however, claimed that the project this time too failed to take off again due to non-allocation of funds by the ministry.

“With the fund allocated to us, we could only purchase 78 breath analysers in the last financial year,” said a senior traffic police officer.

In 2013, more than 1,700 people were killed in road accidents. During an analysis, traffic police found out that many of them were killed due to speeding. This year also, over 400 people were killed on the roads of the city during the first three months.

The cops also had plans to buy 10 Innova cars mounted with automatic speed violation detection system, which would intercept vehicles speeding beyond permissible limits, both during day and night and in all kinds of weather conditions.

This project too is yet to be cleared.

Source -http://paper.hindustantimes.com/