Bangalore: Many residents in various parts of the city find vehicles lined up outside their compounds and commuters judge with difficulty, as over 2,500 traffic signboards have gone missing in the past one year. Traffic police say most of these signboards are lost to thieves, and even if recovered, they are either broken or bent and are no longer in a good condition.
“Each signboard costs Rs 4,500 including the installation charges, and the plate alone costs Rs 2,000,” said ACP (Traffic) M A Saleem, adding that Shivajinagar and Mysore Road have high propensity of theft. “We use flex boards instead, which cost only Rs 100. The city is currently short of 8,000 traffic signboards,” he pointed out.
According to sources, three years ago, the Bangalore City Traffic Police (BTP) had installed nearly 30,000 sign boards. While the city sees an increasing number of traffic rule violators each day, commuters on the other hand, say the traffic police cannot expect them to comply when there are not enough signboards.
A resident of Domlur Layout, who finds call centre cabs parked outside his house every day, said the reason of such intrusion was due to lack of ‘No Parking’ signboards. Another resident supported this, “In April 2012, the ‘Parking’ and ‘No Parking’ zones were identified for marking but the signboards were not installed because the police told us that boards were not available.”
Professor M N Sreehari, traffic advisor to the state government opines the distribution of signboards in the city is erratic. “Signboards are not being used properly in the city. In many places, like near the Gopalan Mall on Mysore Road, there are so many contradicting sign boards that commuters don’t know which one to follow,” he said. Saleem, however, said the replacement and installation of the missing or new signboards can happen only after November, post-Monsoons.
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