Many streetlights go on the blink

BHOPAL: Out-of-order street-lights are adding to the inconvenience of commuters, especially a drive during night through city roads with potholes and bad patches.
"Driving on Link Road Nos. 1 and 2 has become risky these days. There are many patches on these stretches which get engulfed by complete darkness in the nights due to non-functional streetlights.The roads were once considered a pride of the city," Ashok Maheshwari and Haresh Bhojwani, businessmen said. Students Rishi Nagesh, Amit Parihar and Atul Geherwar said, "At most of the places, there are streetlights but they produce very dim light. Under dim light, we fail to see uneven and bad patches which may lead to accident one day."
Anirudh Pratap Singh, who works in marketing sector, says, "Streetlights are required mostly during the rains, when water flows on the roads and people need to differentiate between the pot holes and the road.
"Streetlights help us avoid 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 looked very dark. We were even scared to leave our children on streets after sunset. We dropped in several complaints. But we had to wait for many weeks, before the streetlights were fixed."
This year, the police have reported over 150 chain-snatching cases in Bhopal since January.
Either, there are no streetlights or at most of the major connecting roads of the city, they are not functioning. 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 also does not have adequate streetlights. "The BMC is maintaining around 10,000 tubelights, 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 streetlights making them accident-prone. Still, residents of different colonies, including Trilanga, Avadhpuri and Ayodhya by-pass face problem in absence of streetlights. Roads connecting areas like Daana Paani and Hi-tech city, apart from Kolar road and Gandhi Nagar road also lack sufficient streetlights.
The corporation though has plans to install high masts on all the tri-junctions and squares of the city for better visibility, officials said.