HYDERABAD: The World Resource Institute (WRI) along with Cyberabad Traffic Police is redesigning the geometry of Hitec City junction on a trial basis to encourage more pedestrian safety and traffic efficiency. If successful, GHMC will be implementing the new designs soon.
This will be the first time the city will see such a redevelopment of a junction by a technical organisation, which has previously redeveloped junctions in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi to ensure streamlining vehicles and pedestrians traffic.
The WRI consultants have made several changes across all the eight arms of the junction, including creating a new traffic island.
"The traffic island was made on the intersection which allows traffic to flow from Madhapur towards Hitec City. Here the road has a lot of empty space, which was creating indiscipline among auto drivers, two wheelers etc to come ahead all the way to take U-turn back to Madhapur. We utilised that empty space to make a traffic refuge island," Tarun George, consultant with WRI, said.
The traffic island will not just cover the empty space and encourage road discipline among 2-wheelers and auto drivers but would also help in creating a transit for pedestrians as they cross the busy junction. The other three existing traffic islands have also been modified to make room for pedestrians and correct lane alignment.
"We have also corrected the lane alignment on all eight sides of the road as most of them began as 3 lanes of road and ended up becoming 5 lanes at the junction creating a bottleneck. This has been rectified by creating more room for pedestrians," Tarun said.
The traffic police are hopeful that with this new redesign, traffic clearance will improve. "With this, the infrastructure will guide the movement of the traffic and pedestrians. At present, all road users are looking for open spaces to cross or take U-turns. Now, this will discipline the system," DCP Vijay Kumar said.