Chandigarh is often described as Le Corbusier’s masterpiece with all the advance and planned infrastructure. The city is also known as ‘city of roundabouts’ as after every few meters on the road, there are rotary intersections decorated with plants and flowers, adding miles to the beauty. These roundabouts are generally called ‘Chowks’ in Chandigarh by the localites. Modelled around the traffic system of Paris, French architect Le Corbusier had planned rotaries for the city to bring down the risk of accidents while also adding to the aesthetics.
There are about 47 Chowks in Chandigarh as of now, built to slow down, prevent crashes and traffic congestion. But keeping in view the present road mishaps, fatalities and traffic, the Municipal Corporation (MC) has decided to start the work of re-shaping and re-designing of Chowks in Chandigarh. This aims at lessen the impact of accidents and provide safety to people.
Need of Redesigning the Chowks in Chandigarh
Earlier the MC has initiated the work of re-designing 6 roundabouts in the city under a pilot project at a cost of Rs 1.40 crore. According to the officials, the initiate was carried out on the recommendation of Road Safety Council. The project was aimed to improve the road safety at Chowks in Chandigarh. After the success of the pilot project, now the MC is all prepared to re-shape other 14 roundabouts in the city.
Several major roundabouts under UT Administration will be re-designed and equipped with surveillance cameras and pavers around. The re-shaping aims at decreasing the impact in case of road accidents, easing traffic and providing safety.
According to the framework decided by the MC, the height of 6 Chowks in Chandigarh has been reduced from nearly 2 feet to 9 inches. This will avoid direct crashing with the roundabout during the mishap. Instead of using any hard or rough material, Paver blocks have been put around the chowks with 6-foot width. These pavers will ensure the safety of the commuters or pedestrians while crossing the road. Besides this, the CCTV cameras will also be installed on all these junctions and will be connected to the Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) in Sector 17 for live surveillance.
Despite the new design, the geometry of the Chowks in Chandigarh will remain unchanged. The drivers have to pay to the officials for any damaged caused to the chowks. According to the officials, “Often, there are cases where the drunk car drivers damage chowks and speed away. We will identify their registration numbers through these cameras and recover losses from them.”
This concept of roundabout is already used in Panchkula and now will be implemented in Chandigarh. The decision to redesign the roundabouts was first taken during the state-level road safety council meeting, chaired by UT advisor Dharam Pal in 2021 and subsequently in 2022.
Experts point out that while roundabouts help commuters to self-regulate on speed, the traffic lights have an exact opposite effect. “The common tendency is to jump traffic lights, especially during non-peak hours. Roundabouts, on the contrary, are self-regulatory structures that act as traffic-calming devices,” says Navdeep Asija, a technical member of the state-level Road Safety Council and Punjab traffic adviser.
In a Nutshell
The UT Administration is taking a positive step towards the safety of the commuters. The re-designing and re-shaping of the Chowks in Chandigarh will help in lowering the road accidents and related fatalities. Alongside this will also provide easy to pedestrians will crossing the road. Furthermore, no change in the geometrical structure will not lead to spoil the ancient designing of rotary intersections in the city.
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