PESHAWAR: A vigorous campaign is underway across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to remove expensive “road studs” commonly known as cat’s eyes from the highways, roads and streets installed by various nation building departments at a huge cost to public exchequer.

Aluminum cat’s eyes in their millions have been installed on roads in all districts of the province as a measure to check speed of vehicles. The price of a single reflector depends on the size, with a regular unit costing Rs170 for a small size to Rs380 for size large.

Officially, the budgeted rate corresponding to this price range is between Rs350 to Rs880, according to an official with access to municipal budgets.

In Peshawar alone, the district administration and tehsil municipal administrations have removed reflectors from 800 sites. Officials said that cat’s eyes had been installed roughly at 1,400 locations in the provincial capital excluding cantonment area.

Official says road studs to be replaced with rubber-made speed humps

Under the proposed plan, these would be replaced with rubber-made speed humps to control speeding on intra-city roads and streets, according to Eng Ghafoor, the deputy director of Peshawar Development Authority (Roads).

Officials dealing with traffic management said that large size road studs or cat’s eyes, primarily designed for safety purposes to stop motorists from taking wrong turns, were installed in the province to discourage over-speeding. National Highway Authority, Pakhtunkhwa Highway Authority, Peshawar Development Authority, Communication and Works Department and Cantonment Boards have installed large size, two-faced reflectors — roughly costing Rs1,200 per unit — in urban and semi-urban areas without planning, they said.

The number of vehicles has increased manifold in the province during the past one and a half decades. Bureau of Statistics Planning and Development Department in its 2016 reports about development statistics of KP has shown 1,269,813 registered vehicles in the province. Data about non-custom paid vehicles running on roads in seven districts of Malakand division is unknown.

Officials said that rapid increase in the vehicles’ population, lack of education and poor enforcement of traffic rules resulted in increase of road accidents. The monitoring cell of Rescue 1122 said in its report that total 9,412 road accidents occurred in six districts including 3,889 cases in Peshawar from January 1 to December 1, 2017.

The newly established Performance Management and Reforms Unit (PMRU), a body which functions under the office of the chief secretary, said that aluminum made reflectors had been removed from 2,953 locations during the last 75 days.

Traffic management experts, who criticise the campaign, said that installing cat’s eyes was an expensive and irrelevant measure to check speeding. Among the popular measure world-wide are education about traffic rules, enforcement and lastly engineering.

An official of the National Highway and Motorway Police said that technically road studs had not been designed for lowering speed of the vehicles, ostensibly the purpose for which they were installed.

“Centerline rumble strips (that make a vehicle rattle harder with high speed) are used on undivided highways to reduce cross-over incidents while shoulder rumble strips are used to reduce run-off-road collisions,” he said. The official said that instead of constructing proper speed breakers, the development authorities installed road reflectors that had became a nuisance for the commuters by contributing to wear and tear of vehicles and making rides bumpy.

“After wasting huge funds, the authorities have now realised that road studs are not in the interest of the general public and it also cause damage to the vehicles,” he said.

Ironically roads and streets are devoid of warning signs at busy points where there are schools, hospitals, parks, courts etc and the bodies concerned have installed large size aluminum reflectors all over the province and also tribal area.

An official dealing with the road maintenance in Town-1, Peshawar said that on the one hand the chief secretary had directed to remove reflector-made speed breakers while on the other hand the town administration had floated tenders for installation of reflectors on roads and streets.

Eng Ghafoor conceded that cat’s eyes caused damage and discomfort, but PDA had been asked to use them because there was no effort to educate people about traffic rules and their enforcement, especially those meant to check speed-limit violations.

He said that reflectors were installed on the directives of chief minister, ministers, MPAs and local government representatives after receiving complaints about reckless driving and accidents.

“About 180 applications are presently pending with PDA, seeking installation of road studs in Hayatabad Town alone,” said Mr Ghafoor. He added that rubber-made humps would be installed to cope with the issue of over-speeding and road accidents.

He said that the removed road studs would be reinstalled at appropriate locations. He declined to share details about the funds allocated by PDA for installation of road studs in its annual budget.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2017