An amendment to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888, which will make traffic - both management and planning - the obligatory duty of the BMC is on the cards of the Urban Development Department of the state government.

This follows the recommendations of the W S Atkins Report of 1994, which points out that civic bodies worldwide are solely responsible for traffic management in their cities. In Mumbai, however, the BMC Act, 1888, does not find `traffic management' mentioned as its obligatory duty, prompting a BMC official to remark that ``horse-drawn carriages of those days might not have constituted `traffic' as we know it to be.''

As the necessary groundwork for implementation of the World Bank-sponsored Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP-II) - like the formation of a MumbaiRail Vikas Corporation for the suburban railways - the amendment to the BMC Act is imperative to get the loan sanctioned by the World Bank.

The `oversight' in the BMC Act, 1888, on the part of the lawmakers can be shrugged off as a minor detail till the statistics and logistics of Mumbai's traffic management drive home the magnitude of the problem. About 1,634 km of road length, 50 flyovers scheduled to be complete within two years, around 207 vehicles registered per day and an ever-burgeoning number of signals and junctions demands that a single authority be made responsible for traffic management.

At present, the responsibility is shared by the traffic police and the BMC, with traffic being a discretionary function of the municipality. While maintenance of signals is the BMC's duty, their exact positioning is decided by the traffic police. Whereas roads are maintained by the BMC, zebra crossings and dividers fall under the jurisdiction of the traffic police.

While parking has been vested with thecivic body, it is the traffic police who cart away trespassing vehicles and pocket the towing fees.

Predictably, the exchange of files between the two bodies forces delays in addressing signal breakdowns and signalling problems, all of which should be banished once the BMC is made solely responsible for traffic management in the city.

Dr Shankar Vishwanath, deputy chief engineer (traffic), with the BMC, says the changeover is necessary not only due to the WB directives, but also because the grant-in-aid the civic body has been receiving from the state government has stopped.

``While the BMC used to get money for maintenance of signals and painting of zebra crossings and dividers, the state government has now decided that the BMC is rich enough to fund them itself. The grant-in-aid is now being used only for smaller cities in the state which are in dire need of those funds,'' he explains.

If Mumbai's roads are to be saved, budgetary allocations will have to be made and traffic management could attractmore money if it becomes an obligatory duty, legally, rather than just a discretionary function of the civic body.

The BMC's Traffic Department also needs to generate its own resources to keep its wheels well oiled. With the traffic police shooting down civic proposals to have advertisement kiosks at traffic signals, civic officials are dejected. The amendment, it is hoped, will allow the civic corporation to explore its own avenues for revenue generation.

``While the amendment does not specify any of the financial necessities, it is expected that the BMC will have to work out revenue earning methods,'' Vishwanath says.

The amendment will make management of stationary traffic the sole responsibility of the BMC while moving traffic and enforcing traffic laws will be the duty of the traffic police. Though pay-and-park schemes are already being implemented by the BMC, the civic body is not the sole implementing authority of road designs, especially in the wake of agencies like the Maharashtra State RoadDevelopment Corporation (MSRDC), which is building flyovers for the city.

With the proposed amendment, the municipal coporation will become an integral part of things like construction of roads, planning of one-way systems, signalling for junctions and infrastructure maintenance.