5 simple steps to a better Madras

Yes, I am among the minority who prefer to call my city by its erstwhile name of Madras
(instead of the new Chennai). Same goes for Bombay, Calcutta etc.

It's close to 19 years since I came to Madras and from the initial dislike of the city (mainly
the filth, garish posters, noise pollution etc), I slowly fell in love with this city. However, looks
like I am again at a stage where I have started to dislike the city (this time it is the traffic
mainly and ofcourse water scarcity and water logging) and even plan to move to a smaller
city or town. However, given a choice between any of the Metros in India, I would still rate
Madras the best (and I have actually stayed in almost all the metros, so this is no idle breast thumping for one's city).

I am surprised that we have a Municipal corporation with councillors for each ward, on top
of which we have a Legislative assembly with MLAs for each assembly constituency (which
would cover many wards) and finally MPs for parliamentary constituencies which would cover
many assembly segments and even with so many so-called people's representatives, the
city is degenerating by the day. So, the dream of Madras ever being like cities in the developed world, will I am sure, just remain what it is - a dream.

And to top it all, this is not exactly rocket science. City management is not something that
needs technology to be imported. Ofcourse, it will not hurt to study the way it is done in other countries. And don't pack your bags to the US yet. All the info you need is available on the
Internet. But that is more hi-level stuff and we can get to that later. For the moment, what would
help is road / traffic management for which there are lots of tried and tested approaches.

1. Have pavements for every road.
Yes, make this mandatory so that pedestrians do not spill out onto the road creating trouble
for motorists. Most of our roads do not have this simple feature and it is time we went ahead
and constructed them (could even include private participation for construction / maintenance).
And for those roads that currently do have pavements, remove encroachers (mainly shopkeepers) and make them available to the public.

2. Have medians for all roads.
And make them atleast 4-5 feet tall. I do see some initiative on this recently. And the way it
is being done should also be appreciated. They have these metal dies which are positioned
correctly and concrete poured into them. In 2 days or so, the concrete sets and you have a
median that is not only uniform looking, but also fast to build and less labour-intensive also.
I am not a traffic management expert, but I guess a pedestrian crossing every 500ms or so
would be more than enough. This would eliminate jaywalking and people crossing the road wherever they feel like. Will also speed up traffic and avoid traffic jams. It would also help to
locate bus stands near these pedestrian crossings.

3. Use rubberised / plasticised tar for laying roads.
This has been put to use in Kerala and has been a success. The rubber avoids the rains from damaging the roads as they do now. Another university in TN has been experimenting with waste plastic added to tar and serving the same purpose, with the added advantage that we need not worry about handling the tonnes of plastic waste that we produce. Also, it would reduce our crude import bill as tar is one of the byproducts of crude.

4. Encourage public transportation
Handover the MTC to a bright IAS kind of guy with ideas and it should not be long before we
wean people away from private transport to buses and also make a profit for MTC. Start with a detailed study of the busy routes, the peak times at those routes, approx. passengers. Spruce
up the existing buses, procure more (take a WB / AMF loan if required), cut / reduce services
on routes that do not have enough traffic to justify frequent service, introduce the new efforts to
the public and then sit back and reap the results. I am sure that most people who commute daily
by their own bike / car, would rather prefer to commute by bus, provided adequate services are available.

5. Proper traffic lights (correct sequence of lights + timers).
Ensure that all traffic lights work fin till atleast 11PM at night. Also, replace the older bulb based lights to the newer LED lights which are brighter. Ensure that the lights operate in the correct sequence ie. there should always be the yellow / ember light during the change from red to green and vice-versa. The ember light enables users to get prepared. Also, it would be useful to have timers fitted in conjunction with the lights which indicate the seconds remaining till the next change of light. Thus if you are at a red light and the timer indicates that there are 75 seconds till it becomes green, you could switch off the engine and relax. Saves you petrol too.

And ofcourse as road users, we could also put in our bit, by following the traffic rules and driving safely.

A kid's mind is like a sponge.

Am back in Chennai after spending 9 great days in paradise, oops Kerala. :-)
The weather was great in Kerala, had quite some work to be done around the
house which kept me busy, went around visiting some relatives and had nice
home food after around 2 months (esp. welcome after the one month that I
spent in the US eating lousy Pizzas, Hamburgers, etc).

As usual, no visit to Kerala is complete without a trip to Kollam to meet my
niece Divya. Also, had to give her the stuff that I brought for her from the US.
While there, my sister mentioned that the day before I was to reach Kerala,
she noticed Divya trying to eat much more than what she usually does. She had
more breakfast than she usually takes, tucked in more lunch and by dinner time,
she was unable to even eat what she usually eats. Still, she was trying to eat as
much as possible.

Having noticed this strange behaviour since morning, my sister asked her the reason.

It seems that during my last trip to Kerala, when I met Divya, I had mentioned that
she was growing in height, but looked very lean. And told her that when I see her next,
I want her to have put on some weight and look like a gundu mani. This was the impetus
behind her last minute attempt at eating more.

I was surprised at the impact of my comment made in jest on a young mind. We adults
are not aware of how much kids look up to us and how seriously they take our comments.
This incident will make me more careful in what I say around kids.

The good side of this is that since kids look up to us, we can use this opportunity to inculcate good behaviour and civic sense in them. All we have to do is do things properly and kids will follow without us having to even open our mouth to preach to them. Instead of lamenting
about the littering habits of people around us, all we need to do is look for the trash can the
next time we have the chocolate wrapper to dispose off. You can be sure that the young
mind that observes this, will automatically emulate you and grow up to be a better person.

No public transportation please. We are American.

Got an insight into yet another American way of thinking when I was in the US last Oct'05.

My friend who used to live in Baltimore had moved to a swanky new row-type home in
Virginia and I had gone to visit him during the weekend. He has a 30 minute drive to his workplace in D.C. from his residence.

Since the place where he lives was now a big community and with most of the residents
working in D.C., I was wondering why they did not have any means of public transportation (buses, MRTS, whatever) connecting both the places. What he replied gave me an idea as
to why there is almost nil public transportation in the US whereas almost all of Europe is
connected by train and within the different countries they have efficient public transportation by means of buses etc.

He said that the authorities had come up with a plan to provide a means of public
transportation to connect D.C. and this part of Virginia. And the idea that they proposed, sounded pretty good to me. What they wanted to do was to make use of the existing wide beltway and have a kind of train service running on the median of the beltway with stations
set every few miles or so. I assume that the plan was sort of like the MRTS (elevated rail)
in Madras which runs over the swampy land of the Buckingham Canal which has no use otherwise.

But, it seems this idea was vetoed by the current residents, to my surprise. In India, we
would always like to stay somewhere that is well connected by a public transportation
system.

The reason for the residents not warming up to this plan was quite simple. Currently the
people owning / renting a home in the community would definitely need to own a car due
to the commute involved. But, if a public transportation system comes in, this would mean
that even people without a car of their own (read low-income, mainly black) would move
into the community.

As per the residents, this has two fallouts. The property / rental valus will fall if the
community projects residents of the kind mentioned above. Also, the residents seem to
have reason to believe that the current peace and tranquility that is prevalent in the
community will be lost and would give way to violence, which they would not like to
expose their kids and family to.

So, they veto any suggestion by the government to build public transportation to their community, like buses, trains etc. And this is true not only for Virginia. I have heard the
same argument in Atlanta too.

All these years, I was thinking that it was the powerful car manufacturers lobby that was
behind poor public transportation in the US. Now I know better.