Amid continued high pressure at key junctions in Noida Extension alias Greater Noida (West), the Gautam Buddh Nagar traffic police have come up with a new plan to ease congestion in the area during peak hours, officials said on Tuesday.
Noida Extension houses hundreds of group housing societies and is home to lakhs of people. Commuters from the area, a large chunk of them engaged in the service sector, travel to and fro Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, Delhi, and Gurgaon daily.
During peak traffic hours in the morning and evening, the pace of thousands of vehicles is reduced to a crawl due to high-pressure points at key junctures like Parthala Chowk, Tilpata, Shahberi, Lal Kuan, Chhijarsi, Chaar Murti, Ek Murti, according to residents.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Anil Kumar Yadav said the department has gained an advantage from the Integrated Security and Traffic Management System (ISTMS) located at the Control and Command Centre in Sector 94 of Noida, which has coverage of 82 locations in the city with high-tech cameras.
Noting the unavailability of such a facility in Noida Extension alias Greater Noida (West), Yadav said the department will soon put in place a system to obtain real-time information about traffic flow at the key junctures and accordingly plan the physical deployment of personnel.
“We are going to increase four more LED screens at the ISTMS which will be used to obtain real-time traffic pressure in Noida Extension/Greater Noida (West). For this, we will use information from Map My India and Google Maps. We will also take inputs from local TV news, social media updates on Twitter, Facebook etc and accordingly plan diversions or deployment of personnel,” DCP Yadav told PTI.
“Apart from this, people can share traffic updates at the Traffic Police Helpline number 9971009001 for information and they can get timely updates also from this number,” the IPS officer said.
He said the traffic police will similarly monitor congestion on Dadri, Pari Chowk, Kulesra, Bisrakh, Kasna routes in the industrial areas of Greater Noida to ease congestion on roads.
Meanwhile, Greater Noida (West) residents said wrong-lane driving and illegal parking on roads are major concerns along with inaccurate deployment of personnel because of which traffic woes have become a pertinent problem in the region.
“We would welcome the move of the traffic police if such an initiative takes place. However, over the years, we have seen that there has hardly been a check on wrong-lane driving, or illegal parking on roads. The deployment of traffic personnel has also not been as per the requirement to tackle the situation,” Manish Kumar, a resident, said.
“As long as the issues with deployment are not fixed, there is not much hope of finding a solution to the longstanding problem of road traffic congestion in the densely populated area,” Kumar added. The Gautam Buddh Nagar traffic police currently have around 500 personnel across the twin cities of Noida and Greater Noida, according to DCP Yadav.
