Learnt Lessons from Beijing Delhi moves to 2010 Games

After the Beijing, China visit of different officials of Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Delhi Government, now there are clear signs that they have learnt a lot and eager to implement those things in Delhi before 2010 Commonwealth Games.
In my one of previous post Delhi to Learn from Chinese Preparation Model, I have reported about the visit of the government officials to china, to learn their preparation model for the Olympic Games and in Different Cultural Events during Commonwealth Games; I tried to figure out what they have learnt there.

In coming times we would see more implementation of different lessons learnt there.
As the Capital gears up to host the Commonwealth Games in 2010, ensuring free passage to athletes and their kin, officials and spectators on roads which are already choked to capacity is going to be a huge challenge.

The high level traffic police official who was the member of the team who went to China for the study reported ‘‘The first thing that struck me in Beijing was the roads, some of which are as wide as 10 lanes. The surface quality, road markings are brilliant and even the signages are uniform and self explanatory. Even though there is traffic on the roads during peak hours, the discipline of drivers is another striking feature,’’

But even as the Beijing experience was ‘‘great’’, the officer remarked that they are on the right track. In terms of traffic management technologies, the signaling systems on roads leading to the Olympics venues was Intelligent Traffic Signals (ITS), which Delhi has already started setting up in a phased manner. ‘‘By the year 2010, the plan is to have ITS on all 87 corridors which will be used by players and officials. The scheme will cover 302 intersections,’’ he added.

This entails installation of intelligent signals at all the intersections which will gauge the flow of traffic and adjust the cycles accordingly, video cameras at important locations which will relay real-time images of roads to a centralized control room, Automatic Number Plate Recognizer (ANPR) cameras which automatically read number plates of vehicles committing traffic offenses and send the data to a central server for generation of challan slips, Variable Message Sign (VMS) boards to give road users information about road conditions ahead and prosecution cameras attached to traffic signals. A state of the art traffic monitoring centre is also on the cards for greater efficiency.

‘‘The ITS system was conceived much before I visited China and is in the advanced stages now. It will be a reality before the Games,’’ he said. The process of development and control of systems was managed by a traffic control bureau. Beijing had also created a dedicated lane for vehicles with special labels, which included players, officials and selected taxis. ‘‘The lane discipline among drivers in the city was commendable and we will make efforts to emulate the same here. For this, creating awareness among drivers is important.