CHENNAI: As part of the measures to improve the road safety and thereby reduce the fatalities, the Tamil Nadu government has decided to install advanced CCTV cameras to monitor the vehicles on the highly congested State and National Highway roads across the state
The pilot project is to be implemented between Chennai and Tiruchy on the National Highway 45. “About 280 km of the NH road would be brought under surveillance cameras during the first phase. It is estimated to cost ` 25 crore,” Transport Minister M R Vijayabhaskar told Express at the sidelines of a meeting at an MTC central depot on Tuesday.
Official sources said the advanced cameras would share the vehicles’ speed, GPS location and vehicular traffic on the road with the control room on real-time basis. “CCTV cameras would be installed at the accident-prone places and monitored by a dedicated team. In addition, the system would also monitor the vehicular congestion at toll plazas en route,” said sources.
The move is also expected to reduce the road traffic accident response time by ambulances from the current 15 minutes to 10 minutes.
“The average road traffic accident response time by ambulance services was 18 minutes in 2016, but it was reduced to 15 minutes in 2017. The vehicle monitoring system would further reduce the time to less than 10 minutes,” explained the official.
According to official records of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), about 1.29 lakh vehicles pass the Vanagaram tollgate on the Chennai bypass road a day, while 95,230 vehicles cross the Paranur toll gate on NH 45 (new number NH 32).
The four lane Chennai-Tindivanam section remains congested throughout the year. During rush hour and festival seasons, thousands of vehicles pile up in front of the toll gates at Paranur, Athur (Tindivanam), Vikravandi, Senguruchi, Thirumandurai and Samayapuram between Tambaram and Tiruchy.
“Vehicular traffic status at six toll gates would be displayed through digital boards for five to six toll gates” added the official.
The total length of the national highway roads in Tamil Nadu is about 5,324 km, out of which 3,285-km roads are maintained by the NHAI and about 2,039 km roads maintained by the National Highways wing of the state government. The length of the State Highways roads is 12,093 km.
Even though the share of State and National Highways on the total road network accounts for around 10 per cent of highway roads, about 55 per cent of accidents happen on the highways.
The official records revealed that road accidents claimed about 17,218 lives across the state in 2016, while the number was reduced to 16,157 in 2017.