Fatal accidents increasing on Agra-Lucknow Expressway
Agra, May 20: Speed craze without discipline is proving a major killer on Uttar Pradesh's two expressways. While the Yamuna Expressway has taken nearly a thousand lives since 2012, the Agra-Lucknow Expressway has recorded over 100 deaths.
With nearly seven lakh vehicles using the new Agra-Lucknow Expressway, reducing travel time to just five hours, the authorities have failed to come up with a fool-proof mechanism to check speeding.
According to an RTI filed by K.C. Jain, Secretary of the Agra Development Foundation, "in nine months, there were 853 accidents and 100 deaths".
It is estimated that within a year, one crore vehicles will start using the expressway, remitting Rs 200 crore as toll tax.
The 302-km Agra-Lucknow Expressway, a project of the Akhilesh Yadav government, was opened on December 23, 2016. Toll tax was imposed from January 19, 2018.
While the Expressway is becoming popular, the departments concerned have not yet provided policing or ambulance facilities.
"Petrol pump, car mechanics or puncture shops are non-existent. It is one long desolate grey strip through a never ending wasteland," said a frequent user of the expressway, Sudhier Gupta.
Originally the Agra-Lucknow Expressway was designed for a maximum speed of 120 km per hour with automatic traffic management systems aimed at reducing road accidents.
The six-lane expressway, expandable to eight lanes, includes four rail over bridges, 13 major bridges, 57 minor bridges, 74 vehicular underpasses, 148 pedestrian underpasses and nine flyovers.
The road was built in a record time of 23 months at a cost of Rs 15,000 crore. The expressway spans 10 districts, 236 villages and 3,500 hectares of land.
It connects Agra and Lucknow via Shikohabad, Firozabad, Mainpuri, Etawah, Auraiya, Kannauj, Kanpur Nagar, Unnao and Hardoi. It passes through four National and two state highways and over five rivers (Ganga, Yamuna, Isan, Sai and Kalyani).
The state government had promised that the expressway would have a series of development centres, agricultural mandis, schools, ITIs, rest houses, petrol pumps, service centres and public amenities. But till date there has been no progress in this direction.
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UP: Misled by GPS navigation, car falls into river from partially constructed bridge, 3 dead
Bareilly (UP), Nov 24: Three people died when their car fell into the Ramganga river from a partially constructed bridge here on Sunday, police said, adding that they suspect the driver was misled by its navigation system into taking the unsafe route.
The accident occurred around 10 am on the Khalpur-Dataganj road when the victims were travelling from Bareilly to Dataganj in the Badaun district, they said.
"Earlier this year, floods had caused the front portion of the bridge to collapse into the river, but this change had not been updated in the system," Circle Officer Ashutosh Shivam said.
The driver was using a navigation system and did not realise that the bridge was unsafe, driving the car off the damaged section, the police said.
There were no safety barriers or warning signs on the approach to the damaged bridge, leading to the fatal accident, Shivam said.
Upon receiving information, police teams from Faridpur, Bareilly and Dataganj police station rushed to the spot. They recovered the vehicle and the bodies from the river, Shivam added.
The circle officer said that bodies had been sent for post-mortem. Further investigation into the matter is underway.
— Bareilly Police (@bareillypolice) November 24, 2024
