Srinagar: To ensure smooth vehicular movement, the Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS) will be soon functional in the summer capital and work on the project is underway on a war footing basis.
Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Traffic, Muzaffar Ahmad Shah told Greater Kashmir that the primary goal of ITMS is to utilise information technology to modernise key functions of traffic management, Traffic control, Traffic Law enforcement and Traffic information dissemination in the city to build a safer city with smooth traffic flow.
“This will provide greater information to authorities to proactively manage ongoing traffic situation and allow citizens to make informed travel choices,” SSP said. “With ITMS, the overall burden of traffic on the roads will reduce and it will result in greater journey time reliability for the citizens and local businesses improving overall productivity levels.”
The SSP informed that ITMS project is under Smart City projects.“In the first phase it will be operational at 60 locations in Srinagar,” he said adding that system will help in automatic number plate recognition, red light violation, no helmet, triple riding, no seat belt, use of mobiles while driving and wrong parking.
SSP said that high resolution camera have been fitted at Red Light Crossing. “They will be sending footage to our ITMS traffic control which is under construction,” he said, adding that at these 60 locations, the traffic department will have very minimum personnel deployed. “Violator will get e-challan and there will be no chance to alter anything.”
The ITMS, he said, automatically encrypts and transfers data of violation to a centralised server at the Traffic Police headquarters. “The system also facilitates e-challan generation along with photo and video evidence which is then sent to the violator’s mobile phone through SMS. The system is capable of 24X7 operations,” SSP said, adding that this solution will have an overview camera to capture the zoomed-out picture of an entire area when there has been a red-light violation.
The city traffic police chief said that that they will soon launch an awareness campaign among the people. “Notifying of locations, besides cautioning the drivers and the general public to make sure to follow all traffic rules like seat belt and zebra crossing after the operationalisation of ITMS at these sites,” he said and hoped that citizens will cooperate. The system would consist of camera mounted sensors for better detection of traffic violations and data would be relayed to the central control room.
“It will also help police to detect and register cases against persons for not wearing helmets, over speeding, triple-riding, stop line violations, speaking over the phone while driving and other violations,” he said.