23 September,2016 08:38 AM IST | | Anurag Kamble
In the evenings the police add one or two lanes to north-bound roads by diverting traffic from the south-bound roads with barricades
To ease the heavy traffic in the city, the Mumbai Traffic Department has come up with an innovative idea. Traffic police is using reverse laning to experiment on busy roads to reduce traffic jams. This involves adding one or two lanes to a road with barricades from another road.
The department has started this on the Western Express (WEH) and Eastern Express highways (EEH) since past fortnight. After getting encouraging feedback, police is ready to experiment with two more roads.
Commuters are stuck in heavy traffic on south-bound roads in the morning and north bound roads in the evening. It takes more than two hours to reach Borivli if someone starts from Dadar in the evening.
Top cop says
"In peak hours the WEH carries more than 2 lakh vehicles daily, out of which around one lakh come from outside the city. So, we started this technique called âreverse laning,'" said Milind Bharambe, Joint Commissioner of Police, Traffic Department.
"In this, during evenings we add one or two lanes to the north bound roads by diverting traffic from the south bound roads, by using barricades. Right now we are adding lanes to the stretch from Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road junction to Pushpa Park, Goregaon. It's a 6 km stretch having no traffic signals. This has benefited many commuters," added Bharambe.
The EEH is also a cause of concern for many, especially people living in Thane and nearby areas.
Traffic officials have added lanes to the route from Amar Mahal junction to Chheda Nagar junction, which is a 2 km distance.
The police are now using this technique only in the evenings, but it shall be implemented in mornings too. In few days time police will add the Dadar TT-Sion stretch (3km), and Pydhonie-Avatar Singh Bedi Road (3km) to this experiment.
