i think it is most important to first consider increasing the capacity of the road by improving the intersections. intersections are the main bottlenecks. widening roads only brings more traffic to the intersection. if the intersection is still the old design then it only means more traffic in the jam. if the roads are widened at intersection so as disperse the traffic stuck at intersection faster then automatically the capacity of the road will improve. a narrow road with good intersection design will carry more vehicle/time than a wide road with bad intersection design. many members here have constantly spoken about it here. if any of you is attending this meeting, can you look out if anybody is making this point. can you please find out what exactly is the official take on this idea? i think they are going to say the volumes are so big that intersection improvement is not sufficient. but if the volumes are really so big, then neither will simple widening of the road work. irrespective of how wide your road is unless the intersection is wider to accomodate turning/merging traffic you cannot eliminate congestion. please if any of you attend can you ensure this point is discussed. Micro level Traffic Management Needed

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I'm really worried about the rate at which we're chopping off trees for this road-widening menace. I understand that this becomes necessary as vehicles increase on the road, but as any road user in Bangalore will confirm, 90% of our traffic woes including cogestion at intersections is because of boorish road users; no one wants to wait a couple of minutes for the next person; people flout all rules (and decency) with glee. I cannot stop at a red light now because I'll get hit by people who want to jump lights; I don't think widening roads will ever solve any problem with this kind of behavior on the roads; and footpaths are disappearing; where are pedestrians supposed to walk? It's hard enough to ride/drive on these roads and reach your destination in one piece - no one spares a thought to people who walk our roads; how many Bangaloreans drive/ride? Most of us depend on the pathetic public transport system and - for those of us who haven't had them detached from our torso yet - our limbs. Near where I live (in Domlur), there is a bizarre flyover that has opened up because of which one stretch is signal-free; there are no footpaths on that stretch; earlier, if I had to get from my side of Airport Road to the other side, I could just walk on the footpath in 5 minutes and reach where I wanted; now, I can't walk; I have to take my bike and it takes me 30 minutes on the bike to get to where I can get in 5 minutes by foot; how absurd is this? The road is much wider and there now is even a choice for me to get killed a few feet above ground level because of the flyover, but that has only created a new menace: overspeeding - which has taken more lives on this road than I care to count. To accomplish all this, they chopped around 50 trees in my area; you can protest, scream your lungs hoarse, who cares?

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The arrows in the picture indicate that this pertains to countries where you have left-hand driving - just an observation. Muralidhar Rao

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I am part of the Hasiru Usiru. I had attended this meet, and made a presentation also, the matter being the same as posted by me under "Better bussing for a green Bangalore". However, the following posting I made in the HU y-group will show where the problem largely lies.

That improved bus services is the most cost-effective answer to the exponentially increasing traffic, and attendant problems, in the city has been known for ages. But, neither the government nor the people want to look beyond BMTC to provide it - some because of vested interests, some because of dogma, some due to a lack of awareness, and some because of a combination of all these factors.

Yes, there are the lot, who in their fascination with the ‘growth’ of the economy, seem oblivious of the stress we are subjecting mother earth to. In that respect, Das’s presentation has considerable relevance, and, with his permission, I am proposing to pass it on to various groups, more particularly ones like CMCA (Children’s Movement for Civic Awareness), supported by the Public Affairs Centre.

When I originally proposed to make my presentation at the public meeting on Thursday, there was every effort to dissuade me. At the meeting, every effort was made to hurry me through, so much so, I was quite distracted and missed out on many aspects that I wanted to bring out before the gathering. The press release, as well as the display material at the venue, didn’t seem to carry any of the points that I was making. The specific mention of ‘facilitating entry of private players into bus services’ in the Urban Transport Policy (read: http://traffic-transport-solutions.blogspot.com/2007/08/exchange-with-ms-k.html) was deliberately omitted. I was asked specifically to state that the views expressed were my own.

Now, the question that arises is where do the people responsible for all these fit into in the list that I have made out at the end of the first para? I must admit I am a little perplexed. In their desperation to see that the TVS’s and TATA’s don’t get into the picture, aren’t they subverting the interests of the HU? Isn’t TVS already amongst the biggest beneficiaries under the existing scenario, recording as it is perhaps the highest sales in the world for its two-wheelers in the city of Bangalore? And, aren’t TATA’s set to follow suit with their Rs1-lakh car?

There’s no denying that the private sector players have shown us the way in the other sectors which have been liberalized, with everyone concerned including the poorest of the poor benefiting considerably. Admittedly, there are corrections required. But, that doesn’t mean we should continue to suffer and pay for the burdens imposed by the public sector monopolies.

Muralidhar Rao

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