KOLKATA: The Metropolitan Building area, which has witnessed several accidents over the last two years, has become a worry for the Kolkata traffic police While some police steps seemed to have turned effective to some extent in curbing crashes on the stretch, several measures suggested by the cops and road engineering changes have been lying at a proposal stage. The accident on Wednesday morning, in which an executive on the way to his office was killed and three others were injured, and the one last month, in which four occupants had a miraculous escape, proved further action was needed, claimed police officers on the ground. “If the EM Bypass is the most accident-prone, this is our Achilles’ heel. The road on the northern flank shrinks at this point, and we often find vehicles coming from the Science City direction jostling for space with cars speeding down the Maa flyover. This had led to multiple accidents in the past. The Metro construction and the fact that buses now tend to keep to the right flank, as they are not allowed on the Chingrighata flyover, have added to our woes,” said a senior Lalbazar officer.To stop vehicles from bumping into one another on the north-bound flank of Bypass near Metropolitan Building, the traffic police have introduced two new signals, one where Maa flyover descends on Bypass and the other at the Avani cut-out, close to Metropolitan.For now, thus, vehicles getting off Maa flyover are stopped at the signal for one minute to allow vehicles using Bypass from the Science City side to move ahead towards Chingrighata. Cars on the service lane are also stopped for one minute. Once these 60-second phase lapses, the vehicles from Science City are halted for 30 seconds to allow Maa flyover and service road cars to pass. “The plan is to allow one lane of vehicles to move forward even as we hold back another lot. This is the only way we can control the volume of traffic here. This concept has been introduced on the Santragachhi flyover with great success,” said an officer.But cops on the ground pointed out that speeding vehicles do not always pick up this narrow alignment. “We need more lighting, especially on the edges. Road furniture are being planned, in consultation with road engineers,” said a source.A year-and-a-half after the traffic police introduced 25-odd automatic number-plate recognition cameras (ANPR) to the city and motorists started getting instant e-challans, along with video-grabs of them speeding, cops are looking into other technology to curb speeding on the accident-prone Bypass, especially between Salt Lake stadium and Science City, and a small stretch from Tiljala to Chowbhaga on Basanti Highway. TOI was the first to report on this tender process in the last week of August. Cops added that with most motorists now aware of the location of a speed gun, they tend to slow down at those points before slamming on the accelerator. “Maximisation of speed guns will hopefully reverse the trend,” an offial said.

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