LAHORE - The Punjab Safe City Authority (PSCA) e-ticketing initiative showed outstanding results during its first two years from September 2018, as the number of fatal accidents had decreased by more than 40 percent in the provincial capital. The significant decrease in number of fatal accidents was made possible due to various initiatives of PSCA besides comprehensive awareness and enforcement drive of City Traffic Police (CTP) for the implementation of traffic rules and laws. The PSCA and CTP joint initiatives has helped improving the traffic index in the provincial capital by 91 degrees besides enforcing traffic rules and laws by vigilant monitoring of vehicles through its state of the art cameras. More than 4.4 million e-tickets were issued during two years, due to which above Rs 339 million were deposited in the national exchequer, said PSCA Chief Operating Officer (COO) Kamran Khan here on Monday while talking to mediamen.

Out of the total e-tickets issued by PSCA, about 2.1 vehicles and 2.3 million motorcycles were ticketed, whereas more than 85,000 commercial vehicles were also ticketed during these two years, creating a sense of responsibility among people towards implementation on traffic rules and laws.

The PSCA COO said that after the inception of PSCA e-ticketing system, more than 100,000 traffic violations were observed on first day, which had been reduced to less than half today, adding that road accidents and causalities had also considerably reduced due to effective traffic management and e-ticketing. 

The PSCA team deserved appreciation on the successful merit-based operations of e-ticketing project, he maintained.

Meanwhile, in order to pursue e-ticketing system and maintain a strict check on traffic rules’ violations, the PSCA has recently started sending SMS to e-tickets default vehicles’ owners so that they can pay the tickets in time, otherwise the vehicle could be impounded in police station, said a spokesperson for Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA).

A SMS would be sent to the vehicle owner on the mobile number in the records of the Excise Department. In the initial phase, SMS were being sent to five or more e-tickets defaulters’ vehicles’ owners, he said and added the purpose of sending SMS was to inform the owners about non-payment of their e-tickets. 

In the next step, the traffic violators would receive the SMS regarding immediate payment of e-tickets, after which the City Traffic Police would take action against those who did not pay e-tickets. 

In this regard, Chief Traffic Officer (CTO) Syed Hammad Abid had formed 17 teams which would trace and take action against e-tickets non-paying vehicles. 

For this purpose, a mobile application had also been provided to the City Traffic Police by the PSCA through which e-tickets could be checked on the spot. 

It may be mentioned here that the PSCA was only issuing e tickets to traffic laws’ violations pertaining to zebra crossing, over speeding, line-lane violation and traffic signal violation while the scope of PSCA e-ticketing could later be further extended to 24 types of traffic rules’ violations after the approval of Punjab government, the PSCA COO added.