Islamabad: CDA to carry out safety audit of Islamabad roads

[Naveed Yaseen]

The Capital Development Authority (CDA) has planned to conduct safety audit of all major roads of the federal capital to identify road safety problems that may affect any road user and ensure highway safety.

The road safety audit is a formal safety performance examination by an independent audit team. It is the evaluation of a highway scheme during design and at the end of construction to identify potential road safety problems.

A senior CDA official said the audit would be conducted by an independent, multi-disciplinary team of trained specialists. The team’s findings, including potential safety problems, are documented in a report that also helps the concerned department to incorporate findings in future projects.

He said the audit features highway design, traffic safety, human factors, accident reconstruction, enforcement, road signage, safe curving, turns and intersections.

He said the road safety audit aims at minimising risk of a traffic crash and ensure that all the measures to eliminate or reduce traffic problems have been taken during the execution of the project, besides promoting safety of road users.

He said the Authority has invited international consultants to carry out a comprehensive road safety audit of its road infrastructure, development of road safety program and capacity building.

“We would prefer international experts as it is for the first time in Pakistan that the safety audit of urban roads is being conducted. This is why there are few experts who can execute such projects,” said the official.

He said the prominent road safety auditors belong to England, Finland and some other European states, and we would try to hire some professional from there.

The hiring process of consultants would take another one month or two, said the official, adding that it would help the Authority to maintain international standards in future projects.

He said it is better that the safety audit is conducted in all the phases of road construction but initially, the Authority would audit the roads which have been opened to traffic. When asked, he said there is no need to carry out safety audit of under- construction Zero Point Interchange project as the project has been started after thorough discussion and vetting of design by a prominent architect.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=142509