Mangaluru: The four new clocks on the new clock tower have stopped showing the correct time and resemble those at an international airport! Now the work to ring the clocktower with a traffic circle has also been stopped – by the traffic police! They raised objections about the flow of traffic given the limited space around the clock tower and the traffic patterns around the refurbished monument. This because the design of the new roundabout was larger than the previous one, because of the base circumference of the Clock Tower.
A lot of money – around 70 lakhs – has been spent on the clock tower that really doesn’t tell you the time, and now some extra money is likely to be spent and respent on the traffic circle being constructed at its base.
The police objections saw a high-powered delegation visit the spot on September 24, 2020, to understand for themselves the nature of the issues. The delegation consisted of mayor Diwakar Pandeshwar, Standing Committee Chairpersons, Corporation Commissioner Akshy Sridhar, Managing Director of Mangaluru Smart City Ltd (MSCL) Mohammed Nazeer, and Er Arun Prabha ( GM-Tech at MSCL), ACP’s Nataraj and Vinay Gaonkar, other police officials, Corporators, and Corporation and Smart City officials.
The Corporation Consultant/IDF Dharmaraj also present explained the proposed design with dimensions indicating that there was enough space for traffic flows. However, the elected representatives’ objection was that there were a lot of complaints from the public regarding the work taken up, also that the Traffic Police were objecting to the idea that a larger than the existing circle would inconvenience the public with congestion.
The work was then frozen for a couple of days until the designs were altered. In the interim, the Corporation has been instructed to concretize the roundabout area, and the two smaller circles will be developed as per the plans, with the larger one will be developed only on completion of all related work.
In pursuance of yesterday’s meet at the tower, the wider roundabout has been removed today and the flattened area will be concretized.
