Islamabad traffic police has no speed radar cameras

Safe city cameras will be installed soon which can easily read new licence plates

ISLAMABAD: Islamabad Traffic Police (ITP) has been unable to check speed limit violations on the capital roads since the department has no functional.speed checking cameras.

With over 70 people killed in road accidents so far this year, police said speeding was not a major problem on the city roads.

Instead, the traffic police say that insufficient and improper road engineering by the Capital Development Authority was to blame for high incidence of road mishaps.

“We have limited personnel and resources to regulate the ever increasing traffic flowing into the capital,” SSP-Traffic Malik Matloob said.

He said that traffic management was a component of the Safe City Project. Once fully functional, he said the traffic including speed limits would be monitored through the surveillance cameras installed across the capital.

“The new number plates being issued by the excise office are compatible and readable by the Safe City cameras. Any vehicle violating speed limits would be identified and documented automatically. However, this system has not been made fully functional yet,” the SSP added. He said the manual speed checking cameras which were previously used by the traffic police had become obsolete and were not in use.

Asked how the police enforced speed limit regulations in absence of a speed checking system, the traffic police chief said speeding was not a major issue in the capital as all three major roads were either under-construction or too bumpy to speed. “A large portion of the Expressway is under construction as currently work is under way on three flyovers. Similarly, work is under way on metro bus project along the Kashmir Highway, while the IJP Road is in poor shape,” he said.

Matloob said that daily traffic influx into the capital had increased manifold but road infrastructure development and capacity and strength of traffic police did not grow accordingly.

“The road furniture we have today is more or less the same we had in 1992. No new road has been built since the development of the Islamabad Expressway and the IJP Road in 2005. When these two roads were built [in 2005], the total influx of traffic into Islamabad was between 20-22 thousand vehicles per day and today 0.575 million vehicles enter the capital every day through 31 entry points,” the SSP said, adding that the total personnel ITP had including the clerical and ancillary staff were 685.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 7^th, 2017.