Minister suggests reducing size of Old Market roundabout

MARGAO: Town and Country Planning Minister Vijai Sardessai on Thursday inspected the Old Market traffic circle along with PWD officials and Traffic police and suggested that the Margao Municipal Council should be willing to make some sacrifice in public interest while also suggesting that the size of the roundabout be reduced.

In the first place he accepted the proposal to construct a road from the Sulabh toilet after the trial court building through the MMC land where its garage is situated to connect to the ring road or Colva road so that people wanting to proceed to Colva take that road without coming to the Old Market Circle.

MMC Chairperson Dr Babita Prabhudessai who was also present for the inspection, demurred that the land was required for cleaning the vehicles and also for maintenance. That is when Vijai quipped that the MMC should sacrifice something in the interest of the people.

He suggested using the adjacent land for parking MMC vehicles and further offered the council dedicated parking space in the multi level parking planned on the land opposite KTC bus stand that has been filled and leveled recently.

He also spoke to the owner of the building situated next to the circle alongside the road coming from Ravindra Bhavan and asked his NOC for the PWD to construct a slipway there and said in lieu of the one metre wide road that will be utilized the government would consider giving him an increased floor area ratio for his building there.

The most important thing decided was to reduce the roundabout that has become the topic of discussion as no roundabouts are mandated when traffic signals are erected.

Speaking to media persons he said the traffic signals are switched on only after 8 am so that school going children are not affected. The timing of the signal has also been reduced from the earlier 60 seconds to 35 seconds and on busy sections to even 25 seconds.

“Besides we have also now changed the system so that traffic signals can be given manually and all these measures are to ease the distress that people were experiencing with the traffic signals,” he said adding that the authorities were still seeing how to make the signals most effective.