City officials are looking for private investors to help convert all the traffic signals in Lahore to solar power, with three companies already expressing an interest in doing so at five junctions.
A team of officials from the city government, Lahore Development Authority, Traffic Engineering and Transport Planning Agency (Tepa), City Traffic Police and Parks and Horticulture Authority was set up earlier this month after Caretaker Chief Minister Najam Sethi suggested that solar power would resolve the problem of traffic jams occurring due to traffic signals failing during power blackouts.
Members of the team, which has held several meetings, told The Express Tribune that First Bio Gas, Izhar Private Limited and Qarshi Pvt Ltd had expressed an interest in installing traffic signals powered by solar panels at five junctions. The companies would set up and maintain the lights for 10 years, and in return get free advertising at the site. The proposed junctions include two on The Mall, two on Gulberg’s Main Boulevard and one on Ali Zeb Road.
The officials stressed that the project was in the early stages and that the specifications of the new traffic signals and the first junctions to be converted were not final. The project would also require approval from the incoming provincial government.
Tepa Chief Engineer Saeed Akhtar said that the companies would set up solar panels and change the lights in the traffic signals, replacing the 90-volt bulbs with 10-volt LEDs. Each junction would cost around Rs700,000 to convert, he estimated. Each junction has 12 to 20 assemblies (an assembly is a set of red, yellow and green lights). There are a total of 156 junctions in the city.
Around two years ago, Tepa set up a set of solar-powered traffic signals at the Shaukat Khanam junction, at a cost of Rs1.5 million, to see if running traffic lights on solar power was feasible. Akhtar said that the project had worked well.
On May 6, the caretaker chief minister said that traffic signals rendered non-functional due to load shedding were causing traffic jams. He said that converting traffic signals to run on solar power would reduce congestion in the city and directed the LDA to take measures for the conversion of signals to solar power in a phased programme, starting with The Mall. He said that sponsors should be sought for the conversion in order to reduce the cost of the programme.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 18th, 2013.