The Government’s decision to allow e-rickshaw in the national Capital may compound the existing traffic woes in the national Capital, experts feel. Since the battery-operated rickshaw move at a relatively slow speed, their synchronisation with the other fast moving vehicles will also be a difficult task.
Owing to their rising list of fatal accidents, and recent ban, the e-rickshaws have been in the news for all the wrong reasons since long now. But, as the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) lifts the ban, their presence would be rather apparent on Delhi roads which could lead to similar chaos on the streets for want of stricter laws to prosecute them. Further, the absence of adequate infrastructure to facilitate operation of slow-moving traffic would also add to the woes.
Traffic experts opined that the speed of the battery rickshaw shuffles between 15km/hr to 20km/hr, which is nothing compared to the speed of other vehicles - which on an average ply at the speed of 60-70km/hr. “The roads in the national Capital have not been designed to facilitate movement of non-motorised or slow moving traffic. Their presence on the Capital roads will be a major issue for the traffic managers. It can topple any time; the traffic will be slow as they pause anywhere to pick and drop the passengers,” said SP Singh, transport analyst at IFTR. He added that the roads will become more unsafe and the traffic would be crippled.
Meanwhile, road experts claimed that creating a dedicated lane for such vehicles would be of great help as it would cause no disruption to the general traffic. “Dedicated lanes and making a physical segregation for them on the roads might be of help so that they have a separate lane where they can ply . At the same time, monitoring that lane would be the need-of-the-hour and spreading awareness about it too,” said Nishi Mittal, ex-Chief Scientist, Central Road Research Institute (CRRI). The speed of the rickshaws is slow and in case of an accident the impact on the slow vehicles will be more, so we need to segregate them from the rest of the moving traffic, she added. Notably, the Government had constructed cycle tracks and non-motorised vehicle (NMV) lanes on arterial roads ahead of the Commonwealth Games to facilitate the slow traffic but the same could never be enforced due to their faulty design and alignment. This had resulted in massive snarls that forced the authorities to abandon the plan.