Traffic police test drone monitoring

Jail Road traffic observed to pinpoint rule violations, design issues

LAHORE:

The traffic police are experimenting with drone surveillance technology to pinpoint wrong parking, road engineering issues and interruption in flow of vehicles on the busy roads of the city.

As an initial experiment, Lahore City SP Shahzad Khan conducted a drone survey of Jail Road.

Chief Traffic Officer (CTO) Muntazir Mehdi said the drone technology was used to observe wrong parking, road engineering flaws and other issues for better traffic management.

He added that violations of one-way traffic were also observed with drone camera.

The Lahore High Court had instructed the traffic police to take strict action and impose high fines to stop one-way violations.

The traffic police, while complying with the orders, is issuing Rs2,000 tickets to the violators of the rule. However, no notable decline in the violations has been observed.

The traffic authorities have adopted the surveillance technology to note underlying problems behind the issue.

A few years back, a survey was conducted to identify the traffic choke points in the city as well the spots where one-way traffic was violated frequently. The survey had shown that most of the cluster points of the violations were where the engineers had neglected the needs of the residents in designing the roads.

The traffic congestions points were near business hubs that had no parking plazas around them.

Several spots prone to violation of one-way traffic restriction were identified on the Jail Road during the earlier survey.

A major point was at the interchange of Shadman Underpass.

The survey showed that the large residential area of Shadman had been ignored while designing the Jail Raod as a traffic signal-free route.

A commuter going to Shadman from Qurtaba Chowk on Jail Road had to travel to Canal Road to take a U-turn before turning towards the area. This constituted an extra drive of about five kilometres.

A large number of one-way violations, including several resulting in accidents, were reported at the point.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 1^st, 2022.