In a pilot project, Bengaluru Traffic Police geofence 10 signals around K.C. General Hospital to give clearance for ambulances

Bengaluru After trying adaptive signals and synchronised signals for years now to ensure the free movement of ambulances on the busy city streets, the Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) have hit upon a novel, yet simple mechanism to solve the problem.

After trying adaptive signals and synchronised signals for years now to ensure the free movement of ambulances on the busy city streets, the Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) have hit upon a novel, yet simple mechanism to solve the problem.

In a pilot project, the BTP have geofenced 10 traffic signals that lead to K.C. General Hospital at Malleswaram. This will detect ‘108’ ambulances with a global positioning system (GPS) device within a radius of 50 metres, and turn that arm of the signal green. At present, if two ambulances approach a signal from two different arms of the signal at the same time, the ambulance that is flagged first will be given the clearance first.

“The pilot has been successful. It is a novel solution and can be easily scaled up to all signals across the city and we can give clearance to all ambulances through this mechanism. However, some issues need to be sorted out,” said M.N. Anucheth, Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Bengaluru.

“As per our data, each day the city records around 3,000 ambulance trips, including the ‘108’ service and private ambulances. We can give clearance to any ambulance with a GPS device installed through this technology. But giving such clearance to 3,000 trips every day is not feasible and may not be necessary as well. So we need to create criteria for giving such clearance. How do we decide which ambulance we need to give clearance and which may not require, is the question we are grappling with,” Mr. Anucheth explained. 

The BTP is now trying to devise a standard operating procedure (SOP) to decide which ambulance needs to get a clearance on priority. A representative of the ‘108’ ambulance service sits at the Traffic Management Centre in the city, and they can flag ambulance trips that need to be given clearance, for now, sources said.