February 6, 2006	Monday	Muharram 7, 1427

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LAHORE, Feb 5: The World Bank is organizing a video-conference in Islamabad this week to assist Punjab in planing an integrated traffic system, initially in big cities, placing road engineering, traffic police and encroachments under one independent authority.

Sources told Dawn on Saturday the conference would provide an opportunity to Punjab officials concerned to interact with experts drawn from different countries.

The experts would suggest ways to integrate traffic system in the province after learning about the prevailing system and problems in respect of traffic management, encroachments, road engineering and traffic laws.

In the light of the suggestions, officials would formulate a working paper, suggesting the provincial government how to move forward to achieve its target.

The study is a part of an overall World Bank assisted multi-million dollars programme of improving infrastructure and public service institutions, initially in five major cities and then in all urban centres of the province. The five cities are Lahore, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Multan and Faisalabad.

The World Bank will start giving an annual assistance of $100 million to the province under the development policy loan from the next financial year.

The assistance will be given for at least five years to help Punjab not only develop infrastructure but also improve waste disposal and treatment facilities, drinking water services and sewerage system.

The sources said that traffic system study was aimed at introducing an integrated traffic management mechanism in the province, covering transport system, road engineering designs, and introducing a modern traffic police.

Right now, they said, traffic police were unable to streamline the ever-increasing load of traffic in big cities because they did not have any control over road engineering, traffic signals, type of transport and its routes. These subjects were being handled by separate agencies or departments, having no or less coordination with each other.

The study would provide guidelines how to synchronize road engineering with traffic handling system. It would suggest the design and mode of traffic signals and how to remove encroachments to allow smooth flow of traffic as per the requirement of traffic police.

The study would also suggest improvement in traffic rules which had become redundant, and which type of laws were needed to keep roads free from encroachments.

“The final gain of this exercise will be the creation of independent traffic authorities having control over all related spheres,” the sources said.