"The cabling of these detectors is under process and we hope that they will be able to provide information on the traffic volume from first week of April," said Abdul Qaiyum Project Director (PD) of DUTP.

The detectors will help DUTP to control traffic according to the volume of vehicles at certain signal points.

"We would be able to measure volume of traffic at nine signal points and set the duration of signal accordingly," Qaiyum said.

The detector is a sensor, which will send signals via a chip transferring information to the Central Monitoring Station (CMS) at the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC). The signal duration would then be set according to the information sent by the detector.

"The signals will start operating automatically once we set the duration and this could be changed if volume of traffic changes," said DUTP's Project Director of DUTP.

Grameen Phone (GP) has provided the information chip and DUTP has to pay GP Tk. 50 lakhs for maintenance of the nine vehicle detectors for three years.

The vehicle detector is a part of DUTP's Tk. 14 crore electronic signal project funded by World Bank for 59 electronic signals throughout the city.

With the introduction of automatic electronic traffic signals the traffic situation of Dhaka has improved, but because the volume of traffic is not monitored congestion has increased at several signals along Shahbagh to Kataban, Technical Darus Salam and the signals at the Kakrail roundabout.

"We have to operate signals manually to cope with the traffic congestion as the duration of traffic signals are not set according to the vehicle volume," said a traffic police officer at the Kakrail roundabout.

The PD of DUTP thinks that vehicle detector will be able to solve the problem erupted by lack of information of traffic volume.

"We can always change the duration of the signal and set it accordingly if it is reported by traffic police," said Qaiyum.

"We have installed the vehicle detectors to see the impact of the detectors on traffic movement. We are hopeful that traffic will be more easy to control once the detectors start functioning," the PD added.

The vehicle detectors are set at the Gulshan 1 and 2 intersections, Technical Darus Salam signal, Bijoynagar, Malibagh, Tongi Diversion, Malibagh Railcrossing (Atish Dipankar Road), Dhaka Sheraton and Bangla Motor intersections.