The number of prosecutions for violation of odd-even scheme seems to be constantly on a decline as only 710 challans were issued on Monday despite the traffic volume increasing significantly as the schools and offices opened after a long weekend.
The traffic police and the enforcement wing of the Transport Department had jointly issued 1,311 challans on the first day of the scheme and 1,002 challans on the second day.
Even stark is the decline in the prosecutions by the Delhi traffic police which had issued 884 and 678 challans respectively on Friday and Saturday.
On Monday, however, it issued only 256 challans. Officials said while the compliance level has also increased, but due to rise in traffic volume on Monday, the main focus of the traffic police was on regulating the traffic, especially during the peak hours. The maximum number of challans were issued by the traffic police in south and east districts (34 each) followed by New Delhi district (33). Out of the total 710 challans issued on Monday, 454 challans were issued by the Transport Department.
Meanwhile, despite being a working day, the Delhi Metro did not see any significant increase in ridership during the working hours despite the fact that long queues were witnessed in some stations in the morning. Till 8 pm, around 22.73 lakh passengers had travelled in the Delhi Metro against 22.53 lakh commuters last Monday, said metro officials.
When it comes to the road transport, around 4,500 buses were deployed by the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) on the roads on Monday, including 468 contract carriage buses under Paryavaran Bus Sewa, to cater to the rising demand as many people left behind their cars as the odd-even scheme entered its third day (excluding Sunday).
On Friday, the first day of odd-even phase II, 4,485 buses were deployed which conducted 42,791 trips in total to ferry 36,84,918 commuters. The number of buses were, however, reduced to 4384 which carried out 40,768 trips to ferry 38,94,655 passengers.