Jam, Jam, here comes the man...

Bangalore will soon become famous for jams...of the traffic kind!Ruthless in their being, gut crunching at their best and utterly time wasting, traffic jams are every Bangaloreans nightmare! I like them for only one attribute of theirs that they are a great leveller. Be it a modest Maruti 800, a Corolla or a BMW (there are quite a few of those in Bangalore), a school bus an ambulance or a police car there is no escaping a jam. They are predictable and they are not predicatable; depends on where you are at what time. A traffic jam is an invisible giant that likes to take walks on some busy, already choked spots of the city, on the nicest times of the day and leaves behind miles-long pile-up of vehicles of all sizes. The giant also shows up unpredictably in some unexpected spots. When in a mood he also likes to play games with Murphy's laws in the middle of the streets, making you end up thinking how
the hell this happened.
This giant was born out of the consummate marriage of bolted growth and bad infrastructure. An unlikely union, but no one saw it coming. The powers that be were busy appeasing the rural vote bank and their own thirst for power they did not deserve or know what to do with. EVen now that this has happened, it is the lame bureaucracy that has been outwitted by the pace of growth and is bogged down by its own weight.
There are 7 million people living in Bangalore. There are 1.2 million privately owned vehicles, 12000 goverment run buses and as many private buses running in the city.There are about 70000 Autos, 10000+ tempos and everyday about a 1000 new vehicles are registered.Having been caught unawares and clueless about what needs to be done to catch up with the fast emptying road-space, the local government has tried some mildly successful experiments to counter deficient roadways for the ever-growing populace and the vehicular appendage that comes with the people.

The favourite one of these has been the conversion of roads to one-ways. While it has reduced congestion, it has only increased travel time.It has added to the confusion. It is literally like a game that the police try new permutations for one-ways to identify what works best. Nothing is constant except the change- seems to be the rule of the day, going by the gusto with which the traffic police is making maps obsolete and testing peoples' patience. A study says these one way conversion have helped improve average speed of movement in the city from 14 kmph to 16kmph. Nice! But is this enough? They also defined a factor called Level of Service (LOS) where in they divided amount of the traffic on a road by the amount it was built to support. If this is between 0.6 and 0.8, we are good. Guess what most important roads in Bangalore (Double Road, Hosur Road, Airport Road, bannerghatta Road etc) have an LOS of >2 and approaching 3. What's the point in converting roads to oneways when they cannot support the traffic anyways? We need more roads- road on stilts, peripheral ring roads, whatever diverts away unnecessary traffic.

We thought we should build flyovers. Fine. But when we built them we did not know how to use them. Why am I saying this? Why do you think, when you see a traffic light (read crossover) in the middle of your journey over a flyover? The Richmond circle flyover actually has a manned crossing right in the middle of the X that the flyover makes connecting four roads near Bangalore club. I think they should build more flyovers and grade separators and build them fast, there is a bomb waiting to go off.There is bound to be a traffic explosion and bigger than what we have seen, and not try such stupid antics with flyovers. This may be a lone example, but this could well be the role model for new ones to come.

There is an immediate need for co-ordination between government bodies that are working in isolation. If BDA builds roads and pedestrians walkways, the BESCOM, the BWSSB or the telephones department digs them up no sooner than the latter finishes the job. What is point in laying the road? Why is there no accountability established?Why cannot the departments talk to each other before doing something? Who is accoutable for these mishaps in the first place?

Three years ago a Bannerghatta Road to Electronics City drive took 30 minutes at 8:15 AM. TOday the same takes 70 minutes on a good day. If you have to maintain the same level of travel time as before you have to start at 7:15 AM. Two years years ago you could start at 7:30 AM. The experience is very stressful and leaves one jittery even as one leaves the parking lot to walk into the office. Average time spent on road has doubled from about 70 minutes a couple of years ago. Organisations are concerned about productivity. One IT company has introduced early morning buses (starting 6:15 AM) and scrapped the late morning buses. Makes sense for the company, but takes flexibility away from people who have no option now, but to take leave, if they have some important personal work to attend to.

A lot of the problems are also due to the pathetic implementation and administration of traffic rules. All sorts fo vehicles driving the wrong way on a one-way street, auto spewing billows of smoke into the city air, cars and bikes weaving through snail paced traffic, cyclists and pedestrians snubbing the wave of automobiles and walking arrongantly in the middle of the road, uncontrolled honking are some of the symptoms of a traffic-illiterate populace. How can we expect to turn this around if people can get licenses to drive, without even passing a test? All one needs to do is pass a 50 buck note and voila you are a license holder! The ease with which the driving examiner absolves himself of the duty of inducting responsible drivers onto the roads speaks volumes about the abject callousness with which we treat the concept of road safety.

I think a solution for this is to drastically increase the penalty for small offences the cops usually condone. Jumping lights should invite a penalty of 500 bucks and parking on restricted spots should invite an equally large fine. And penalize repeated offences by withdrawing driving privileges. But the ground reality still remains that about a fifth of the drivers do not have a valid license. What have they got to lose?

An unmanned traffic light is useless with people oblivious to the concept of right of way. Unless there is a cop waiting to scribble down your vehicle number for the offence of jumping a light, the average Bangalore driver does not mind jumping a red signal.Even with the cop around many are willing to take the chance since there is a very bleak chance that you may actually get a notice asking you to cough up a fine.

On the infrastructure front, the executive should tighten up contracts to complete contruction work in time. There should be heavy penalty for delays in completion of the projects. It worked in Mumbai. Apparently, builders had to pay-back the authorities upto 1 lakh for every day that the work got delayes beyond the deadline.

Lately, there have been talks of declaring certain key areas as non-congestion zones. This means that you would not be allowed to drive into the area or pay a huge toll to do it. The idea is obviously aimed at discouraging use of private vehicles in congested places. This is unfair to the vehicle owners because the very reason they need the private vehicle is becuase the public transport system is shame. If the plan has to be fairly and success fully implemented, public transportation options around the region need to be tremendously improved. Without this, it is possible that the local economy in that zone would devolve.