I received a mail from SM Hussain who writes, “The round-about at Pul Pahladpur near Suraj Apartments and opposite to the Railway Reservation Office, has been demolished a couple of months back to ease traffic congestion. So far no action has been taken by the authorities to fix traffic signals in its place. As a result of this heavy traffic jams and accidents are happening day in and day out.

“With no signals, vehicles move in all directions without any traffic police manning them. Continuing with 'round-abouts', there was a time, Delhi had maximum number of them instead of traffic-signals. These round-abouts look beautiful with shrubs, green grass, fountains etc., and add beauty to the city roads. Some of the well maintained round-abouts are still found in the diplomatic area (Chankyapuri) and opposite to the Teen Murti Bhawan where the density of traffic is relatively less. But with the increase in traffic, these round-abouts have become redundant and they have been replaced with traffic signals for smooth flow of traffic.

“Multiplicity of authorities like Delhi Police, MCD, CPWD, Road Research Organisation etc., are involved in removing round-abouts and replacing them with traffic signals. Traffic is going to increase many-fold in coming years and traffic jams are going to become a daily routine especially during peak hours if these round-abouts are not replaced with proper traffic signals.”

Even in Chandigarh, some of the beautiful roundabouts have given way to traffic signals. But only at places where there is a heavy movement of traffic. However, in Delhi too few rotaries were changed into traffic signals. But personally I feel that rotaries do a good job provided the traffic police man it. The problem is lot of Delhi drivers don’t follow the traffic rules. Hence jams occur.

According to Delhi Traffic Police, the general principles for the 'right of way' in the Traffic system followed in India are:-
(i) The vehicle on one's right side gets the priority.
(ii) The vehicle on the main road gets priority over the vehicle entering from a side road and
(iii) The vehicle already on the rotary gets priority over the vehicle entering the rotary.

At each roundabout the right of way is that of the vehicles which is already in the roundabout and the vehicle, which is yet to enter must come to a halt, give way to traffic on its right which is already in the roundabout and then only proceed to enter.
I hope if everybody follows this norm, one would have a smoother flow of traffic in the roundabouts.