Road safety: ‘Pelican crossing to be introduced soon’

Special Monitoring Unit says the project will be started at Niaz Beg.

LAHORE: Traffic police would soon introduce pelican crossing on busy city roads to ensure pedestrians’ safety, Special Monitoring Unit (SMU) senior member Salman Sufi said on Saturday.

“The new system will be installed at Niaz Beg, Jail Road, Multan Road and Maulana Shaukat Ali Road,” he told The Express Tribune.

Sufi said the project was a standard traffic management system that would help pedestrians cross the road safely and without disturbing the flow of traffic.

He said a pedestrian crossing control box would be installed on either side of the road that could be operated by pedestrians.



“In order to cross the road, pedestrians will have to press a button on the control box. This will turn the traffic signal red for 15 seconds allowing them to safely reach on other side of the road,” Sufi said.

He said that once they had pressed the button, the pedestrians would not be able to control the signal again for the next three minutes.

He said the pelican crossing would be introduced at Niaz Beg where traffic wardens would be initially deployed to help citizens use the control box.

The chief minister has formed a committee to finalise traffic reforms.

Special Assistant to Chief Minister Rana Maqbool, who heads the committee, had held several meetings with the capital city police officer, the chief traffic officer, the Traffic Engineering and Transport Planning Agency (Tepa), the Punjab Information Technology Boards and the Excise and Taxation Department to discuss the reforms.

Various Tepa teams have also been coordinating with the CTO to identify traffic chokeholds in the city.

Traffic police has also started identifying places to install loop detectors for the automation of traffic signals across the city. On the instruction of the chief minister to follow the implementation module, the committee has asked the E&T Department and the CTO Office to work out data sharing for the introduction of an e-challaning system.

The committee is also formalising details of a proposal for mandatory driver’s education for private and public vehicle operators.

It is working on various mechanisms to discourage untrained drivers and enact strict penalties for those who hire them to drive public transport.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2014.