Thane: In a unique initiative to beat the traffic woes, the patrol teams of Naupada police station in the city are using bicycles on a daily basis. 

The citizens have been facing a harrowing time due to severe traffic congestion in the area. To cover a short distance, people have to waste a lot of time. Due to heavy traffic congestion from the station area to Naupada, a 10 minute ride can easily stretch to 30 minutes. 

Heavy traffic is also witnessed near Ghodbunder road where Metro Line 4 construction work is underway.

According to officials, due to heavy traffic, police vehicles often get stuck which leads to delay in their response. They said that the bicycles have reduced their travel time and now police can reach a location faster. 

The initiative has been adopted on an experimental basis. The police personnel take their bicycles and reach the locations where other vehicles would take more time to reach. This way their response time has reduced and their presence has increased. Many people prefer to escalate their grievances directly to the patrolling team and by using bicycles to travel, cops have become approachable, they said. 

On Monday morning, some rickshaw pullers got into a fight over one overtaking the other, which disrupted traffic on the main arterial road in. Despite requests by the commuters to stop fight, the heat argument was getting violent. Just when a police personnel came on a bicycle and helped them settle the matter and ensured a smooth flow of traffic. A commuter said that had the cop taken a four-wheeler, he would taken longer to reach and traffic would have worsened by then.

The bicycles used by the police were donated by a social group, Yuva. Officials said that they will evaluate this experiment of using bicycles and decide whether it will be expanded to other areas.