By IANS,
Bangalore: India’s tech hub is choked with the highest vehicle density in the country due to a poor public transport system and inadequate road infrastructure, a senior official said Wednesday.
“There are four million vehicles in the city for a population of eight million. No other city in India has such a highest ratio (1:2) of vehicle-population density,” Bangalore Additional Commissioner of Police Praveen Sood told reporters here.
“This is because there is no efficient public transport system and the road infrastructure is poor,” he added.
Admitting that Bangalore does not have train transport as in Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, Sood said that as a result about 1,300 vehicles were being added every day, causing traffic snarls.
“In cities like Mumbai, around 85 percent of the population uses suburban trains. We don’t have it. Except 5,000-6,000 buses, there is no other public transport system that can be used by citizens instead of personnel vehicles,” Sood said on the margins of a function here.
Sood also moaned about lack of lane discipline, chaotic driving habits and narrow roads.
“When we go on adding over 1,000 vehicles a day and don’t build roads required to take the additional load, how can traffic move? The least we can do or doing is to mange the situation on ‘as is where is’ basis.
“We do not make roads or register new vehicles,” Sood said.
Though the government has sanctioned additional posts for traffic management, the recruitment process has beem bogged down by litigation and long-drawn procedures.
According to city Police Commissioner Jyotiprakash Mirji, there are only 3,200 traffic police personnel for Bangalore. This works out to one traffic policeman for every 1,200 vehicles.