It was after a joint inspection by municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta and former commissioner of police Ahmad Javed in November last year that Sahar traffic chowky in Andheri East, off the Western Express Highway, was demolished due to it being a perceived hindrance to traffic.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), at the best of times, might not be regarded as one of the most intelligent planning authorities around. But if the action of demolishing a traffic police chowky in Andheri East is anything to go by, then the BMC has set a new standard for the short-sightedness that is typical of itself.
It was after a joint inspection by municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta and former commissioner of police Ahmad Javed in November last year that Sahar traffic chowky in Andheri East, off the Western Express Highway, was demolished due to it being a perceived hindrance to traffic. However, the decision seems to have backfired in a major way. This is because since the time that the chowky has been shifted to a spot below the junction of the Andheri flyover, this new location has become the biggest cause of traffic snarls and a hindrance to pedestrian movement.
"The entire Bisleri junction below the flyover is in a terrible mess since the time that the Sahar traffic division has set up an office below the flyover. Towed vehicles along with towing vans are kept outside the office, thus taking away almost 20 feet of road space and creating a bottleneck," said Andheri resident and founder of Welfare Organisation for Road Safety and Prevention of Accidents (WORSPA) Mohammed Afzal.
Afzal added that the decision taken by the civic top brass had been a mistake since no local activist was consulted and neither the BMC nor the traffic department thought of what the repercussions of shifting the chowky would be. "It shows poor planning on part of the authorities and the municipal commissioner should now visit the junction again to see how the decision of helping traffic movement has only created bigger traffic problems," he said.
Traffic officials, moreover, agreed that they were ending up creating a far bigger problem at the new location than at the one before. "We have no place to park the vehicles and there are a lot of homeless people living at this junction, who are not being evicted. We ourselves are operating from something that cannot be even called an office since the metal shelter becomes too hot during the day and does not even have basic facilities," said a traffic cop on the condition of anonymity.
Senior police inspector Govindsingh Parmar of Sahar traffic division said: "We have been holding meetings with the BMC and seeking a suitable location nearby where these vehicles can be kept so that traffic movement is not hindered."
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