NMMC ropes in IIT-B to ensure safety on Palm Beach Road

Civic officials to hold a meeting with institute to discuss safety audit; deliberate on corrective measures

Veda Ramaswamy, Vashi

May 31, 2011 - DNA Navi Mumbai

The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) along with Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) is planning to conduct a meeting soon in order to implement the corrective measures suggested by the IIT-B for improving the safety of the vehicular traffic on the Palm Beach Road. The Road Safety Audit (RSA) which was carried out with an aim of reducing as well as eliminating most of the accidental rates and causes on the arterial road, was released by IIT-B on Saturday. The meeting would be conducted between the authorities once IIT-B finalises on the report after including inputs if any, by the traffic police department.

The 10-kilometer six-lane speed road which connects Vashi and Belapur is known for its high accident rates. In 2010, there were a total of 107 accidents recorded on Palm Beach Road, including 16 deaths, 34 critical injuries, 10 minor injuries and 70 accidents without any injuries. In the wake of the fatality rates increasing on the high speed corridor, Municipal Commissioner Bhaskar Wankhede had appointed IIT-B to conduct a RSA last year. A reconnaissance survey was carried out on December 14, 2010, followed by the main survey on March 12, 2011 and succeeded by the night-time audit in April, 2011 by the transportation systems engineering department group of IIT-B.

The RSA draft report includes several safety issues observed by the IIT-B team during their inspection. Corresponding recommendations have also been stated in the report for improving the safety measures. The summary at the end of the report stated around 40 essential safety issues and the consequent suggestions to rectify them. The report also had 300 photographs related to the issue in order to support their issues. The key problem area causing a major percentage of the accidents on the Palm Beach Road as highlighted in the list is the Killa Chowk.

The Chowk is mainly a junction for the heavy vehicles to commute. Hence, heavy vehicular traffic forms the foremost cause of accidents followed secondly by cars. Another major safety issue brought to notice by the report is the breaking of speed limit. “The speed limit assigned on the Palm Beach Road is 60 km per hour while it is just 30 km per hour on the bridge towards Vashi. However, the vehicles zoom past at a speed of around 100-120 km per hour which proves to be the root cause of most of the accidents. The speed limit of the motorists has to be curtailed in order to ensure the safety of commuters on the road,” ACP (Traffic) Shrikant Dhivare said.

Many other safety issues were stated in the report like the absence of crash barriers on the flyover causing visibility problem at night, street lights being covered by overgrown trees, autos awaiting passengers covering the road curves, pipelines encroaching the road, dysfunctional traffic signals etc.

“NMMC would be conducting a meeting to execute these changes along with IIT-B once the report is finalised. The draft won’t need any additional inputs from the traffic police department as all the issues have been highlighted clearly with the required changes that are needed to be implemented,” Dhivare added. All efforts to contact NMMC officials proved futile.