Rajiv Chowk drive from Tuesday

GURGAON: After the success of their drive to decongest IFFCO Chowk, the city traffic police will conduct a similar awareness campaign at Rajiv Chowk from Tuesday.A team of volunteers, which includes students and employees from various MNCs in the city, will assist cops in educating people about basic traffic rules. Just like golfer Jyoti Randhawa came out to support our campaign at IFFCO Chowk, we will have some celebrities join us on Tuesday as well, said Bharti Arora, DCP (traffic).Police officials are overwhelmed by the number ofapplications received from volunteers who want to participate in thedrive.We are getting a surprisingly good response from privatecompanies which are ready to adopt the intersection for a day, saidArora.The focus of the campaign will be to educate people aboutsimple traffic rules like stopping before a zebra crossing and following lanediscipline. Rajiv Chowk is infamous for frequent accidents that occur here. Itwas named among one of the ten most accident prone areas in the city after astudy by the traffic police.Many of the volunteers, also known asroad safety officers, will stand at the different corners of the intersectionwith placards in their hands urging people to follow traffic rules.This is the least that we can do for our city. Instead of just sitting at home and complaining about bad traffic behavior, we should be part of the solution that is being offered, said Smriti Singh, a management student who plans to join the drive.Rajiv Chowk intersection remains busythroughout the day, and is used by thousands of pedestrians andvehicles.While the problems at IFFCO Chowk were related to wrong alignment of traffic lights and bottlenecks created by huge flow of traffic coming from MG road, at Rajiv Chowk traffic mess is created by vehicles coming from and going to Hero Honda Chowk.After Rajiv Chowk, the nextawareness drive will be held at Hero Honda Chowk, said a trafficcop.As one of the crossing points at Hero Honda Chowk is closed fortraffic most of the day, the traffic gets diverted to Rajiv Chowk only. In sucha situation, vehicles going towards Sector 10 tend to drive wrong way under theflyover and take a right later on. Moreover, a narrow exit lane and service roadfrom Delhi only adds to the problem.According to cops posted on thisstretch, its the sheer numbers of vehicles on the stretch that makes itunmanageable. Things almost go out of hand during evening hours whenrestrictions are raised and a large number of vehicles enter the area. There arearound 12 cops and seven security guards to manage the intersection, said acop.