880 lives lost on GT Road in 3 yrs, ‘faulty’ design to blame

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 13

Over Rs 85 lakh is lost everyday due to road accidents on just the Punjab stretch of Grand Trunk (GT) Road (National Highway-44) due to “faulty” design on multiple spots.

According to the report “Road Safety Assessment of NH-44”, which has been prepared by Traffic Adviser to state government Navdeep Asija, 880 people lost their lives and 525 sustained serious injuries from 2016 to 2018. The report has analysed this three-year data of accidents on the GT Road from Shambhu Barrier to Jalandhar, which is a 212-km-long stretch.

As per the report, the death rate on this stretch is 1.6 per km, which is three times the state average. The report also notes the high socio-economic burden of these accidents. The total loss in the state due to various accidents on the NH-44 has been Rs 933 crore in the past three years, which is Rs 85 lakh per day on an average. The analysis reveals that 92 accidental black spots have been identified on a 175-km stretch of the NH-44.

According to the Union Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, a road accident black spot on National Highways is a stretch of about 500 m on which either five road accidents have taken place in the last three calendar years or 10 fatalities have occurred during this time.

Out of 880 road accidental deaths, 644 (73%) are reported on these 92 accidental black spots falling on NH-44.

“This means about 40 km of the 175-km stretch has some serious geometric design errors and requires immediate improvement, especially in the areas where the NH-44 crosses urban limits,” says Asija.

The report also noted that as per the concession agreement between Soma Isolux and the NHAI, the concessionaire has some contractual obligations towards the safety of commuters.

These include appointment of safety consultant and provision of traffic aid post, highway patrol, paramedical staff and ambulance facilities.

Apart from this, the concession agreement Section 29 binds the concessionaire with “Traffic Cap”. Till January 2018, if the actual traffic on road exceeded the targeted traffic (Traffic Cap) 69443 PCU per day, the concessionaire has to give discounts on toll and deposit exceeded money in the Road Safety Fund. The summary of each applicable sections are given in the next part of this report.

The concessionaire has not fulfilled many contractual obligations specified in the concessionaire agreement mainly between Article 20 and Article 29.

Black spots on highway

The maximum road accident fatalities have been recorded where the NH-44 passes through Sahnewal (Ludhiana), Mandi Gobindgarh (Fatehgarh Sahib) and Sirhind (Fatehgarh Sahib) police station limits, recording 149, 80 and 84 fatalities, respectively. This is 36 per cent of the total NH-44 fatalities reported in three years.