Absence of streetlights pose threat in Bhopal

BHOPAL: Along with pot holes and bad patches on roads, dysfunctional street lights on many roads are adding to the inconvenience for the commuters to drive, especially during night.
"Driving on link road number 1 and 2 has become very risky. There are many patches on these roads which are under absolute darkness due to non-functional streetlights. The situation in the city can be gauged with the situation on this road, which is being considered pride of the city," Ashok Maheshwari and Haresh Bhojwani, businessmen said.
Rishi Nagesh, Amit Parihar and Atul Geherwar, students said, "Even there are street lights on the roads, they are very dim. The upper bulbs of many four wheelers are very strong, which creates a kind of temporary blindness in front of our eyes, due to which we cannot drive at times. Moreover the dim streetlights add on to the trouble, as we cannot see uneven and bad patches which usually lead to accidents."
Anirudh Pratap Singh, who works in marketing sector says, "Streetlights are required the mostly during the rains, when water is flowing on the roads and we cannot differentiate between the pot holes and the road. Streetlights help us identify the bad patches on the roads. Dark roads are also an invitation to crime and are unsafe for commutation."
Nupur Ansari, a resident of Arera colony said, "Streetlights in our locality were not functional, a couple of months ago. This was an open invitation to the thieves and we were scared of any incident of theft. However nothing happened due to God's grace. But the road was very lonely and dark. We were even scared to leave our children on streets after sunset. We dropped in several complaints. We had to wait for many weeks, before the street lights were fixed."
This year, the police have reported over 150 chain snatching cases in the state capital from January.
Either there are no streetlights or if there are electricity poles, streetlights are not functioning at major connecting roads of the city. The major routes include roads leading from MP Nagar to Subhash railway crossing, Mahatma Gandhi circle in BHEL to Avadhpuri and on Link Road No 2 from 5 number bus stop to Mata Mandir square. Interestingly, the important road stretch from the CM House to the Raj Bhavan is also not free from it.
"The BMC is maintaining around 10,000 tube lights, 17,000 sodium vapour lamps, 1000 MH fittings (250 volts), 3,000 CFL fittings and 500 T5 fittings throughout the city. Even with this infrastructure, major city roads are still not equipped with functional street lights making them accident-prone, officials said.
Moreover with city expanding on a large scale, colonies at various places including Trilanga, Avadhpuri and Ayodhya by-pass face the problem in absence of streetlights.
The colonies established from Daana Paani to Hi-tech city, several localities on Kolar road and Gandhi Nagar road have no streetlights.
The corporation also has plans to install high masts on all the tri-junctions and squares of the city for better visibility, officials said.