March 29: A 2km stretch of road from the SDF crossing to Technopolis in Sector V has seen at least three accidents in the past fortnight, two of them fatal.

Last September, Bidhannagar police had turned the route from the Bowlers Den crossing near Nicco Park to Technopolis into a one-way road to ease traffic woes in the tech hub. While traffic flow has since become smoother, the number of accidents has shot up.

Some of the triggers for accidents on this stretch are pedestrians jumping over the median strip to cross the road, buses stopping in the middle of the carriageway to pick up and drop passengers and motorists flouting the one-way rule.

On March 23, a bus that was trying to take a left turn near the SDF crossing hit pedestrians Purnima Mukherjee and Gourhari Jana while they were crossing the road. Purnima, a resident of Kalighat, died of her injuries in hospital.

On March 25, a middle-aged man later identified as Swagatam Banerjee died when a motorbike knocked him down near the Webel crossing.

Metro finds out what puts people in peril on Sector V roads.

Free for all

The road leading to the Technopolis intersection from the SDF crossing is a two-lane carriageway bifurcated by a median strip. Each flank of the road is more than two metres wide while the divider is a foot high concrete block filled with grass, shrubs and plants.

The median strip is no deterrent to violating the rules of crossing a road, though. Commuters alighting from buses and autorickshaws are too lazy to walk down to the openings on the median strip located next to the traffic signal posts. Almost every other pedestrian gets to the other side by walking or sprinting across a flank, climbing the median strip and jumping onto the road at the risk of landing in front of a vehicle.

"It is almost impossible for a motorist to spot a person crossing the divider until the last moment. I barely avoided knocking down a man in front of the Infinity building when he suddenly appeared in front of my car after crossing the divider," recounted Debanjana Chauduri, who works in Sector V.

Kalyan Kar, vice-president of the Sector V Stakeholders' Association, said buses and autorickshaws should ply on the flank along which most offices are located. "We need to create awareness among drivers to go down the right flank as this will eliminate the need to cross the divider for the time being."

No zebra crossings

Bengal's IT hub is creating technology for global clients but does not have the most basic of traffic-safety requirements: the humble zebra crossing.

Since there is little signage directing those who use public transport where to cross the road, people tend to climb over the median strip. Buses often stop in the middle of the road for passengers to alight, ignoring the designated stops at busy junctions like the Infinity crossing, College More and Webel.

Techie Subhashis Sinha, 32, was spotted by Metro getting off a bus on the left flank and crossing the road by jumping over the median strip near the College More intersection. Asked whether he did not think it was a risky thing to do, the young man said walking down to the crossing 300 metres away and then to his office was "too much of an effort".

An officer in the Bidhannagar police commissionerate said cops on duty could do little except request pedestrians not to climb the median strip to get to the other side. "But most people do not listen," said an inspector at the Electronics Complex police station.

Gaps in vigil

Police vigil slackens in the afternoon and that is the time for the callousness of Calcutta traffic to express itself. Metro spotted a Honda City coming out of a bylane and speeding towards the SDF crossing in violation of the one-way rule. The car took an illegal U-turn at the intersection to go towards Technopolis.

Solutions

Where subways cannot be built, footbridges or elevated walkways are the preferred alternative. "If the authorities set up walkways with escalators and ensure that pedestrians use them, the roads would become a lot safer," Kar said.

The Naba Diganta Industrial Township Authority that administers Sector V has requested IIT Kharagpur to suggest a traffic plan and feasible modifications to the road layout. "As of now, we are planning to put up physical barriers on the divider to make it difficult to cross," said Debashis Sen, additional chief secretary and chairperson of the township authority.