BANGALORE: If you have used M G Road in the past few months, you might have noticed that passing the six signals is relatively a little easier. The lights turning green as soon as you pull up to the traffic stop is not to be attributed to luck or divine providence but to the efforts of the Bangalore Traffic Police and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).
BEL has been conducting pilot studies since a few months in order to make the M G Road stretch a smooth ride for thousands of vehicle users who travel by the road everyday. ‘Signal Synchronisation’ for M G Road is all set for a public demonstration by the end of this month according to BEL officials.
“Yes, the project is under experimental trials. The traffic police have not yet been given the project by BEL, but we expect it to be transferred soon,” said Vasant Bhagwath of the Traffic Management Centre.
He added that the project aims to sense the number of vehicles at each junction with the use of virtual loops and cameras in order to ensure that signals are programmed accurately to provide a non-stop drive.
“Data loops on roads are obselete, we are using virtual loops and pilot testing is on. We are employing advanced cameras to measure the density of vehicular movement and volumes,” said a BEL official. He also said that the final synchronization calculations will be made with the help of the cameras.
However, problems like the manual operation of traffic signals and slow moving traffic at the beginning of a signal threaten to negate the effect of such projects. “If changed once, all the signals will have to be synchronised again. This will lead to a waste of time,” said Bhagwath. Officials will have to look into a solution for this problem in order to ensure full efficiency.