BENGALURU: The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike is finalising its road safety committee by this month end to conduct a road safety audit. The panel will have nine members. The audit will look into ensuring safety measures on the road, such as no potholes, proper reflectors, signage and road markings. It will also study blackspots, high-rise pedestrian crossings, humps and traffic signals wherever required.
The team includes five auditors and four urban planners. So far, three consultants have come forward from Bengaluru who are certified by Central Road Research Insitute and MoRTH, said a BBMP official. They are yet to finalise on the team.
“The team will be formed before third week of July and they will be given three months time to complete the audit on all major roads spanning 1,400km. They will look into prevention of road accidents, how to make roads pedestrian-friendly and so on,” said Dr Ravikumar Surpur, Special Commissioner (projects), BBMP.
Suggestions made by P Harishekaran, the city’s traffic commissioner will be forwarded to the team. “We have gone through the suggestions made by the traffic commissioner and have shortlisted few areas which require humps and high-rise medians. However, his suggestion of more than 400 humps in various parts of the city is not feasible,” said an officer from BBMPs traffic engineering cell.
Apart from this, engineers from the smart city project team along with a consultant from Viirtrus Solutions, a private firm which has worked on innovative solutions in Dubai and Australia, is voluntarily conducting a pilot study to contribute to the road safety auditing team. As of now, two locations- Ashoka Pillar Circle and Madhavarao Circle have been looked at. “We have identified two locations where there is a clear design fault. With our study, we found that there will be a 50 per cent reduction in traffic congestion,” said Raghavendra Prasad, chief engineer of smart city project.
Six months ago, hearing a PIL, the Supreme Court formed a committee and listed out an audit as a measure that can be undertaken to understand road accidents in the country.