Guard rails placed at very short intervals by police across New Town and along Salt Lake Bypass in northeast Kolkata to check vehicle speed are leading to minor accidents and traffic congestion as drivers zig-zag to avoid them.
The problem increases at night when these iron structures painted blue become difficult to spot, especially as mist descends on the city. New Town, still not a concrete jungle, regularly has foggy nights.
At night, drivers often spot the guard rails at the last minute and have to brake suddenly.
Guard rails on several stretches of EM Bypass, the Rashbehari connector, Park Street and JL Nehru Road pose a similar risk.
New Town resident Arkaprava Bhar who drives as well as rides a motorbike termed the guard rails a “menace and a recipe for accidents waiting to happen”.
“We are extremely careful. I myself have seen several vehicles scraping against them as the drivers often struggle to control their vehicles through the tight zig-zag,” said Bhar.
Several New Town residents have voiced their concerns on Facebook. They have requested the Bidhannagar police and the Kolkata police to do something about this.
The Indian Roads Congress (IRC) specifies three types of guard rails — for pedestrians, median dividers and movable ones mounted on wheels. There are specifications for each.
The movable guard rails, engineers familiar with the IRC norms said, should be in black and yellow.
Across Kolkata, the guard rails are painted blue and white, which may not be visible under the blue sky while driving down long stretches. Ideally, the tubular pipes that make up the frame of a guard rail should be wrapped in prismatic reflective sheets so it glows in the dark.
“A vehicle would need some time to slow down after spotting a guard rail from a distance,” an engineer said.
Engineers usually lay down specifications for movable guard rails when disbursing money to districts and police commissionerates to buy “traffic furniture”, an official in the transport department said. “The length should be 2.86m and the height 1.78m. The distance between the vertical rods can’t be more than 5 inches,” the official said. “Usually, the police place orders but don’t check if the specifications have been met.”
“One tends to see through the rods of movable barriers during the day,” said an officer of the state traffic police.
But traffic police insist guard rails are required for sudden nakas and to force drivers to slow down. “Guard rails help slow down vehicles and control speed in areas where there aren’t speed cameras,” said an officer of Bidhannagar police.