Another accident on Green Lands flyover due to median

HYDERABAD: A cement-laden truck crashed into a median at the merger point of the Greenlands flyover and the Begumpet rail over bridge (ROB), triggering massive traffic snarls on the arterial Sardar Patel Road and derailing schedules of office-goers and school students.
Road-users had a horrid time for several hours due to the callousness of civic authorities and South Central Railway officials.Traffic police had to divert vehicles between Secunderabad and Panjagutta for over two hours.
The heavy truck, carrying 460 bags of cement, was moving towards Punjagutta from Secunderabad side. Like many motorists who suffered injuries and even deaths at the bottleneck, the truck driver failed to notice the median in the middle of the flyover and the vehicle crashed into it at 6.40 am. Due to the accident, the axle of the truck got damaged.
“I was supposed to reach my office at Road Number 45, Jubilee Hills by 9.30 am. However, due to the traffic jam and diversion, I managed to reach office only by 11 am. The additional median on the Greenlands flyover is very dangerous, especially if one is not used to driving on the particular stretch. I request the government to immediately remove it to save lives,” P Sunil Kumar Reddy, a software engineer from Innobox Systems Pvt Limited, said.
“It takes less than 20 minutes for me to travel between Rasoolpura and Road No. 2, Banjara Hills, but on Tuesday morning it took me over two hours to travel the stretch,” K Hima, an employee, said.
Police were lax as traffic was not heavy when the accident occurred. By 9 am, the regular stream of office-goers hit the roads and within minutes, the SP Road was choc-a-block with vehicles and traffic came to a standstill. Police then woke up and began making arrangements to clear the truck.
Police called in workers to unload cement bags from the truck and they were carted away in two DCM vans. Then, using a crane, the truck was removed from the flyover. It took over two hours for police to clear the flyover and till then vehicles moving between Secunderabad and Punjagutta were diverted on to alternate routes at CTO, Paradise and Rasoolpura junctions.
Several road accidents happened on the flyover at exactly the same spot due to the additional median. The median, which was originally the old footpath of the ROB, was not been removed after the Greenlands flyover was merged with it due to objections raised by the South Central Railway (SCR). The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) had even appointed a consultant, with experts from IIT, to suggest remedial measures and the report containing measures to strengthen the ROB after removing the median was forwarded to the SCR some time ago. “However, SCR has not agreed for removal of the median,” GHMC engineer-in-chief Dhan Singh said.
The SP Road is maintained by the R&B department. According to police, rumble strips (speed breakers) with solar studs, chevron markings, and collapsible vertical poles with radium stickers were put in place at the bottleneck, but got worn out. “A new road-user finds it really difficult, especially during nighttime, to notice the median. R&B has to immediately put up new warning mechanism at the median,” a Begumpet traffic police officer said.
The Begumpet police registered a case against the truck driver under section 279 (driving rashly on a public way endangering human lives) of the IPC.