Thane
As the traffic situation in Thane city worsens, the Naupada police station in Thane has deployed its patrol teams on four bicycles to beat the traffic, improve response time, and serve citizens.
Started on an experimental basis, the police personnel go on their beats on bicycles and actually managed to reach locations where motorised vehicles would take much longer. This has reduced response time, increased police presence, increased their interaction with the citizens who take grievances directly to the patrolling men, and the police personnel get good excercise, officials said.
Thane citizens have been facing a harried time dealing with the city’s internal traffic. A 10 minute ride can easily stretch to 30 minutes due to heavy traffic congestion emanating from the station area to Naupada, and extending further on the Ghodbunder road where Metro Line 4 construction work is on.
“Police cars and bikes were often found stuck in the traffic which resulted in delayed response time to help the citizens. But now due to bicycles, the police may be able to reach a location faster,” said a official.
On Monday, some rickshaw drivers blocked the main arteral road in the morning over a fighting between themselves over one overtaking the other. The heat argument was threatening to get violent, and the traffic was held up. To their surprise, a Naupada police constable came riding a bicycle to stop the quarrel between auto drivers and release the held up traffic.
Chetan Yerapalle, a Thane citizen travelling to his office on a bike, said, “ We all were asking rickshaw drivers to stop but they were not listening. We all were astonished when the policeman came on a bicycle and defused the situation swiftly. The police took them aside and the traffic cleared up. We were really happy with the response from the police. Also if they would have taken the four-wheeler, they would have taken time to reach the spot and would worsened the traffic.”
Senior police inspector, Naupada police station, R V Kshirsagar,said , “We have been toying with this idea for a long time because we can cover the area of five km around our police station easily on bicycle. Sometimes citizens find it difficult to reach out to the policemen travelling on bikes or cars, but the policeman on a bicycle becomes immediately approachable. Our women officers are also accompanying the patrolling party in the morning and evening.”
“The bicycles used by the police were donated by a social group, Yuva. We are doing it on an experimental basis in our jurisdiction to see how this works. We will take a decision on expanding this if it makes a difference,” the officer said.
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