City Reporter
The Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA) installed Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) screens displaying English and Urdu messages about traffic rules, alerts and traffic situation on major roads to guide commuters. PSCA Chief Operating Officer Akbar Nasir Khan said on Wednesday that the initiative had proved instrumental in reducing accidents significantly besides declining crime rate by 60 per cent.
The authority, he added, was also planning to expand its scope to nine other cities, including Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Bahawalpur, Multan, Gujranwala, Sargodha, Nankana Sahib, Sheikhupura and Kasur.
The city traffic was being monitored continuously through 8,000 high-tech cameras having features of rotate, night vision, readability, face recognition etc, he said and added that these cameras were connected with Asia’s biggest wall of video installed at Punjab Police Integrated Command Control and Communication Centre.
To a question, he said that following the Lahore High Court orders, the PSCA and City Traffic Police (CTP) had also been collaborating in issuance of e-ticketing to commuters over violating traffic rules and so far more than one million e-tickets worth Rs 130 million had been issued to traffic violators.
He mentioned that keeping in view successful launch of e- ticketing system in Lahore, the Islamabad Safe City Project’s officials approached the PSCA for cooperation to initiate e- ticketing in the federal capital. The PSCA also extended technical and other support to Safe City Projects of Quetta and Peshawar.
To another question, he said the PSCA had also evolved a mechanism to link together all police officers of the province and 1,200 police stations on the Safe Police Network (SPN) to maintain complete data of Police Emergency-15 as well as analyze police response and crime rate. The SPN also helped in evaluating the performance of provincial, regional and district police.
The PSCA also demarcated separate lanes on The Mall and Canal Road for motorcycles, rickshaws, bicycles and slow- moving vehicles to improve traffic flow. During last one year, the PSCA Lost and Found Centre helped in handing over 119 missing persons and children to their guardians, and scope of such centre would be extended to all districts of Punjab, he concluded.
