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.
No comments:
Post a Comment