People with private vehicles working in Hyderabad's IT sector of Cyberabad will soon receive traffic updates on their phones when it rains, to help them plan or delay their exit from their offices accordingly. Traffic alerts and updates can be accessed through Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s 'MyGHMC' app and a WhatsApp group curated by Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association (HYSEA) and the municipal body.
Information will also be disseminated on the official Twitter handles of Cyberabad Traffic Police, Cyberabad Security Council, GHMC Commissioner, India Meteorological Department (IMD) and All India Radio (AIR).
This is in tune with a decision taken earlier this week after GHMC officials met with the representatives of HYSEA, National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and Society for Cyberabad Security Council (a joint collaboration between Cyberabad Police Commissionerate and IT industry), to address the traffic inconvenience to commuters during heavy downpour between 4 pm to 6 pm in the IT corridor.
Authorities decided to delay the exit of the employees to tackle the issue.
Dubbing it the 'Inclement Weather Traffic Management Protocol', the GHMC said that the proposed resolution would be "implemented phase-wise, while testing for efficiency and building on successful practices, to engineer a year-round inclement weather traffic management protocol in coordination with IT Company facility managers, traffic police and GHMC."
The authorities said that an Early Warning System (EWS) would be put in place, to deliver news in advance in three cycles: 24 hours, 6 hours and 3 hours.
The traffic police will use the hashtag #HYDTrafficAlerts to release information on congested routes and suggest alternate routes on Twitter.
"It is also recommended that companies install and utilise the internal public address system to announce these alerts to ensure the information is widely disseminated," a press note from the GHMC stated.
The GHMC also said that a campaign to promote voluntary staggering by delaying or preponing commute plans when it rains, among IT corridor employees would be launched, with messages like, "Leave an hour later and save 2 hours you could have spent in traffic."
"If companies are willing to work with traffic police on a staggering protocol that can inform when and what size of traffic to stagger, agreements between the company facility managers and Cyberabad traffic police will be signed and a map of major companies in impacted areas, in the agreement, will be drawn up to regulate traffic," the note added.
Earlier this month, many techies were stranded on the roads as a few hours of rain resulted in a massive traffic jam, especially near the Raheja Mindspace underpass. Many took to social media to complain that it took them almost three hours to travel from IKEA to Biodiversity junction - a distance of around 3 km.