Speed limit cautions obscured by trees, some boards too small to be spotted by motorists, others damaged or grimy — TOI’s check of signboards on arterial stretches on Saturday proved that drivers can be truly flummoxed when pressing the accelerator. On Outer Ring Road on the section between Chirag Dilli and Munirka, the speed limit on the board showed 30kmph for all vehicles, which changed just a few metres away to 60kmph for cars and 40kmph for heavy commercial vehicles.
The state of affairs can be gauged from the irony of the Union transport secretary missing three speed signs on Friday and being fined for transgressing the permitted speed limit.
On Saturday, TOI visited several stretches including Outer Ring Road, Ring Road, the Inter-State Bus Terminal at Kashmere Gate and Mahatma Gandhi Road and found that at these stretches the speed limit mentioned on one signboard differed from another nearby. On Mahatma Gandhi Road from Rajghat towards Red Fort, there were no boards informing motorists of what speed to maintain and yet there were cameras to capture speed violations. On the opposite carria geway, there were a couple of boards but they weren’t clearly depicting the speed limit.
The Chirag Dilli-Munirka anomaly is replicated on Ring Road, where the carriageways from Vikas Marg to wards IP Estate have boards at one spot telling motorists the speed limit as 50kmph for cars and 40kmphh for heavy vehicles and then a few metres away, putting the permitted speeds at 60kmph and 40kmph, respectively.
In contrast, on the Josip Broz Tito Marg from Greater Kailash towards Chirag Dilli, you can’t even see the single speed board existing on the stretch because of its smallness. It’s again an irony that nearby are speed violation cameras. As useless is the signboard on Outer Ring Road from Chirag Dilli towards Munirka, which lies hidden behind an electrici ty pole and a tree.
Anil Chhikara, former deputy commissioner of transport and now senior faculty at the Asian Institute of Transport Development, reported facing problems regarding the speed. “The limit mentioned in the challan was different from the one mentioned on the signboards. The view of several of these boards on Nelson Mandela Road, in Paschim Vihar and NH10 near Punjabi Bagh are obstructed,” said Chhikara. “And then there stretches that have been made signal-free corridors but a curb has been imposed as far as speed is concerned. What is the point of making them signal-free roads if one isn’t to drive on them at a decent pace?”
Chhikara pointed out that while the speed violation cameras were installed by Delhi Traffic Police to curb unsafe speeding, it was PWD and other civic authorities that erected the speed limit boards. “An audit should be carried out to determine what is an appropriate speed for a certain stretch since the infrastructure and road dynamics have changed over a period of time. If the challans are issued in a casual manner for speeding, then they should be challenged and there should be a system in place for this too,” added Chhikara.
