A checklist for decongesting our roads

For a city like Bengaluru with a very high literacy rate, it should not be a problem to bring in some order and civic sense into our roads, says a concerned citizen.

Is it difficult for citizens who are so articulate, so cultured and so well informed on conditions abroad to help evolve a traffic flow system and ensure the woes of commuters? The solution could be planned in several layers.

Top on the list is synchoronised signal lights, adjusted to a moderate speed level. Moderate, because all kinds of vehicles ply on our roads and some of them may not touch the speed limit of 40 kilometers per hour.

Heavy vehicles, cargo laden trucks and the like must be barred entry in arterial roads. If this is not possible, they must be allowed to ply only during early morning or late night hours. Also, our city was not meant to be a megacity. So these vehicles could be conveniently stopped at the outskirts and only those carrying a lesser load may be allowed.

We shall not be cruel to the ones who ply their trade with muscle power. But the question is, whether our compassion should extend that far, allowing a bullock cart to block free flow on busy thoroughfares in the name of humanism?

Already some agencies are at work alerting citizens and commuters on traffic bottlenecks. Is it difficult to rope in a 24-hour news channel to assist this effort? All that needs to be done is to market the concept as a carbon credit proposition. Imagine how much fuel could be saved if diversions are suggested and updates are provided on road blocks as and when they occur?

It is disgusting to hear and see incidents of ambulances held up in traffic jams. The very purpose is defeated. A concerted effort is the need of the hour, and for the ones who cannot use public transport, a pooling system may be set up with the help of voluntary agencies. This could also be extended to regular office-goers, with regular timings.

Comments:

  1. B Dutta says:

    quote-
    Heavy vehicles, cargo laden trucks and the like must be barred entry in arterial roads.
    -quote

    Completely agree. Particularly when these big vehicles fail to follow lane discipline, they may cause cascading accidents.

    quote-
    Already some agencies are at work alerting citizens and commuters on traffic bottlenecks.
    -quote

    It’d be great if you could list a few.

  2. Mohan J says:

    Good suggestion. But only if soneome in the authority is bright enough to understand and implement. However the single most effective solution is to run trains. No more matter what you do, roads CAN NEVER cope with increasing traffic. The wider a road, the smoother the traffic flow, the more NEW traffic it will invite, resulting in congestion in a few months time. Look at the outer ring road at Hebbal. There are 500 series BMTC buses every 3-4 minutes, but all of them are packed to capacity and many can’t even board it, even though it is a starting point. How many more buses can you put? Road transport is notorious for having a horribly low capacity utilisation. This is a universal law. Bangalore is blessed with many railway arteries viz. Yelahanka to Anekal (North to south), Whitefield to Kengeri/Yeshwantpur (East west) and all going through Majestic. Not only this, there is a modern but grossly underused track and a railway station only 4kms from the Devanahalli airport. So why are not some intra-city trains run on these routes during peak hours? All the major industrial areas (Peenya, Anekal, Whitefield, Devenhalli) are all well established stations with good road transport connections. An example. There is a daily passenger train that goes from Yelahanka to Byapannahalli (Indira Nagar) in exactly 17 minutes. A private 4-wheeler takes 1 hour to traverse this distance using the 6-lane Bellary road and then the 6-lane outer ring road! Leave alone a BMTC bus. But guess what? The train I refer to goes from Yelahanka to Majestic (via Byapannahallo) in the evening and not in the morning! Not much use for most of us going to work places. For those curious, this is the Chickballapur passenger that has 2 services (one in the morning and the other in the evening). Yes, this is the ONLY ONE train that goes from the city to Devanhallai. The rest of the day the tracks are dead idle. What better way to summarise – God giveth, authorities sleepeth 🙁

  3. Malolan R Cadambi says:

    I have been requesting a lot of people not to use ‘high beam’ when driving normally. This is the largest cause of accidents. But it feels like i am a one man army when doing all this. I feel helpless in attempting to even request people to follow some rules. I will not give up i will campaign even more.

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