The National Transportation Planning and Research Centre (NATPAC) will submit a revised list of accident-prone black spots in Ernakulam district within a month to the Kerala Road Safety Authority (KRSA) for road-owning agencies to initiate accident mitigation measures.
Based on road accident data provided by the police, NATPAC had submitted a list of 39 black spots in the district in 2019 to the authority. The KRSA sanctioned funds to improve safety measures at locales where land acquisition is not needed. Improvements which entail land acquisition will be carried out in the next stage, official sources said.
The upcoming report of 2021 will take into account accident data from 2018 and will have a list of accident-prone junctions and curves like the one at Elamkulam on SA Road, which claimed the life of about a dozen young two-wheeler riders during the past two years, they added.
Officials of NATPAC, Motor Vehicles Department, and City Traffic Police had expressed concern at the steep curve, inadequate road gradient, and varying width of the carriageway at Elamkulam owing to a couple of buildings protruding into the road, as the main reasons for accidents.
They had also expressed concern at accidents beneath flyovers at Vyttila and Kundannur, mainly due to inadequate width of the junctions. Such junctions often find mention in the list of black spots, since little is done to streamline traffic beneath flyovers and bridges.
NATPAC had submitted designs to rectify 75 black spots across Kerala, based on its 2019 report.
