MANGALURU: As Mangaluru is gearing up to become a Smart City, police department, too, has decided to get smart with traffic.Soon, the city will have three Variable Message Systems (VMS) at vantage points keeping commuters updated with all relevant information on the status of traffic in the city.Manjunath Shetty, ACP (Traffic), told TOI that the VMS will be in place in another four days. "The VMS is basically a digital display showing information on all that the traffic police want to communicate with the people. It acts as an information centre," he said.The giant board with a salutation to visitors will comprise details on direction to various localities, the distance to be covered and density of traffic among others. "Commuters will be apprised of casualties on roads, if any, so they could take alternate routes," Shetty said.The VMS will be set up at Nantoor Circle, KPT Circle and B R Ambedkar Circle at Jyoti. The display at Nantoor will guide travellers from Bengaluru and Kerala to the city, while the one at KPT Circle will guide travellers from the Mangalore International Airport. Those arriving from Puttur, Dharmasthala and Kasargod will be directed towards the city at the Dr B R Ambedkar Circle.Sources in the police department said the system had to be in place a few months ago. However, the plan had to be rescheduled due to election duty, obtaining clearances and certain technical glitches.JD(S) unhappyMeanwhile, the JD(S) party has expressed its dissatisfaction over the setting up of VMS at Nanthoor fearing more casualties in the accident prone zone.Sushil Noronha, the district spokesperson of JD(S), said while commuting through Nanthoor Circle is already a risky affair, the installation of VMS would worsen things as commuters would run an eye on the display and lose focus on road."We welcome the decision of police department to install VMS at KPT Circle and Dr B R Ambedkar Circle. However, prior to setting up the facility at Nanthoor, the police need to streamline the traffic woes at Nanthoor. Lakhs of rupees have been spent to try out various measures to ensure smooth flow of traffic at the circle. However, there has been little success," Noronha said.VMS is already in place in metropolitan and a few other major cities.

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