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At a junction on Anna Salai in Chennai, a car edges past the spot where a traffic light once hung, slows down, curves into a U-turn and merges back without stopping. Almost 1700km away, in Bokaro, drivers approach roundabouts that have never needed signals at all, easing off instinctively. In Kota, the same idea of uninterrupted flow often collapses into peak-hour gridlock, forced detours and sudden bottlenecks. India’s experiments with signal-free roads may not have succeeded universally but have left deeper lessons on traffic management and human behaviour. Kota’s attempt was the most sweeping. Under the Smart City Project, it dismantled traffic signals in Dec 2022, spending over Rs 2,000cr from the Rs 5,000cr programme to build more than two dozen overbridges, as many underpasses and multiple slip lanes. At least 12 major junctions were widened and redesigned to eliminate stopping altogether. The redesign drew attention beyond the city too, with industrialist Anand Mahindra among those who appreciated the concept – an endorsement residents now cite as proof the idea was never dismissed as impractical, only difficult to execute at scale. “It’s the only traffic signal-free city of nearly 15 lakh people,” said RD Meena, former officer on special duty of then Kota Urban Improvement Trust, now Kota Development Authority, who supervised the project.
