Given Goa’s burgeoning amount of vehicles on the road,proper traffic management is the need of the hour, especially in the towns,where the flow of traffic is at a high. Goa has only 290 traffic police tomanage nearly 9 lakh motor vehicles in a state that has total of 224 kms ofnational highways, 232 kms of state highways and 815 kms of district highways.The figures and statistics are certainly astonishing, but what is moresurprising is that Goa has only one working traffic signal at the DabolimInternational Airport Junction, which is not under repair presently, as theunderground cable was damaged during ongoing airport expansion work.
The Director of Transport, along with Traffic Department,had experimented thrice to install traffic signals at five different placesacross Goa but sadly, the experiment failed. The signal installed at theNavelim junction in 1999 was one such failure. Then Chief Minister LuizinhoFaleiro was instrumental in getting the signal installed at Navelim but thenordered it to be demolished due to the need for road widening, in 2005. Despiteit being around for six years, the Navelim signal was not used for more than aday, as was the signals at the St. Andrews Junction in Vasco and the one at theOld-Patto Bridge in Panjim.
“Installing signal atall intersections or highways is not a solution, if a traffic signal was theultimate solution, then the four existing ruined signals would have beenfunctional,” said Panjim police PI Dharmesh Angle. He emphasised thatinstalling a signal is one thing but providing basic infrastructure along withit is more important.
The failure of the four signals is mainly due to poor roadinfrastructure, which doesn’t provide space for a free left for instance, andthe lack of road etiquette amongst motorists in Goa. The three traffic signalsat Navelim, St. Andrew, Vasco, and Old-Patto Bridge have resulted in more chaosthan solving traffic issues, while the traffic signal St. Inez was helpful, butwas ruined due to lack of maintenance.
All these signals are automatically operated, which oftenresults in congestion around the signal. On an average nearly 1.20 minutes istaken for flow of traffic on a four lane intersection with automated signals,whereas the police, if manning traffic, can assess the situation and allow thetraffic to flow much faster. “There is no need to operate signals forentire day, considering vehicle counts on the particular roads it can beoperated during peak hours which is more than sufficient in Goa,” saidAngle.
Sources in the Directorate of Transport informed that fiveyears ago, traffic police along with a Mumbai based agency had identifiedaround 23 junctions and road intersections all over Goa for the installation oftraffic signals. But the installation didn’t happen because there was also aneed to improve basic road infrastructure, as most of the junctions and trafficislands in Goa have been designed by PWD engineers, without proper technicalexpertise in traffic management.
Gurunath Kelekar of MARG sums the situation up. “Theinstallation of traffic signals needs to be completed on war footing in Goa.When there are nearly 9 lakhs vehicles registered in Goa, there needs to bediscipline on Goan roads.
| Vehicles | Population |
| Motorcycles | 608690 |
| Bikes on Rent | 19866 |
| Private Car, Jeeps, Taxi and Govt. Vehicles | 193608 |
| Heavy Vehicles, Tractors and others | 12884 |
| Auto Rickshaw | 3883 |
| Total | 893749 |
As per TransportDirector
