india

Updated: Jul 11, 2019 12:52 IST

As the number of road accidents and consequent fatalities increasing along the Yamuna Expressway and the Agra-Lucknow Expressway, worried authorities are exploring new ways to make these two roads safer for users.

The UP Expressway Industrial Development Authority’s (UPEIDA) novel idea of timebound travel to apply brakes on speed on the 302 km Agra-Lucknow Expressway is a mechanism that may be replicated on other expressways and the national highways.

Now, the UPEIDA has started delivering e-challans to vehicle owners who covered the distance between Agra and Lucknow or vice-versa in less than 3 hours.

Disclosing this last week, UPEIDA head Avnish Kumar Awasthi said, “Speed radars installed at the exit and entry points of the Agra-Lucknow Expressway record the entry and exit time of a vehicle and if it is found that it covered the distance in less than three hours, a challan is issued to them.”

The time-bound travel model, according to sources, was already working with a fair amount of success on a road connecting Tirupati-Balji temple in Andhra Pradesh. Presiding over the state road safety council meeting last year, chief minister Yogi Adityanath directed authorities to install speed radars on expressways.

While such radars are yet to be installed along the Yamuna Expressway, Jaypee infratech, the developer, claims that 11 corridor-patrolling vehicles and six police-patrolling vehicles remain on duty all the time on the expressway. “Besides, seven recovery vehicles of different capacities have been pressed into service on the expressway,” the developer said in a report sent to the government last month. The report claims that there were no blind spots any more on the 165-km road. Sources in the transport department said that the Akhilesh Yadav government’s proposal to create highway police as a separate cadre was a good idea.

“The current government must revive the proposal and work on it to introduce highway policing system in the state. It will certainly work as deterrence for traffic rule violators.

Last month, the state cabinet gave a nod to the proposal that sought hefty increase in the amount of fines for various traffic rule violations to discourage people from breaching the law. “But the people must not follow traffic rules for fear of penalty but for their own safety. After all, wearing a helmet or a seatbelt is for their safety,” said a transport official.