The Delhi Traffic Police is set to restart its SMS alert service from next month. The message alert facility to commuters was stopped nine months ago after it became an expensive affair for the Delhi Traffic Police.
lakhs of commuters in the Capital used to avail the message service, which was started during the Commonwealth Games held in 2010.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Anil Shukla said, “We are at the final stage of negotiation with a private party to revive the traffic update facility through messages. The facility was withdrawn after the last vendor hiked the rates from 1 paisa to 20 paise per SMS. This proved to be a costly affair and thus the facility had to be withdrawn so that a different service provider could be roped in for the purpose.”
The SMS updates were available free of cost to the users, in case they had joined the recipient group. Before the suspension of this service, the traffic updates were available in all parts of Delhi. One could subscribe to the service by typing JOIN DTP and sending it to 09219592195. “Subscribers were sent free traffic alerts from the traffic control room. In case the users wanted to unsubscribe to the facility, they had to message lEAVE DTP and had to send it on the same number,” said a traffic police official.
The initiative had garnered a lot of interest among the daily commuters as it used to alert them well in advance to avoid certain routes. “It is relief to hear that traffic police is restarting the SMS alerts soon. I had subscribed to the SMS traffic alert service to know the traffic situation in the city. The updates used to come handy, especially during the peak hours and during the monsoon,” said Neha Tandon, a documentary filmmaker.