Woes
Some Flaws in the basic planning of infrastructure
If there was an award for the worst citizen, Punekars (including me) would win hands down. We do not have civic sense. We throw garbage on the road, we believe that celebrations have to be noisy, we don’t bother to understand if our celebrations are disturbing others, we also believe that all celebrations have to be in the public arena and in general we are never satisfied with anything. Add to this the infrastructure woes. Everyday I have to travel across the city and noticed that there are some very basic mistakes in the planning done. Here are some:
Bremen chowk near Aundh to University circle – At the starting of this road near Bremen chowk the road is narrow. What this means is that when a motorist starts from Bremen chowk he is on a three lane road at the traffic signal. As soon as the chowk is crossed, there is PMPL bus stop. Due to this the road is narrowed down to two lanes and Punekars being what they are immediately change lanes without looking in the rear view mirrors. This regularly and repeatedly leads to small accidents and road rage scenes. The easiest would be to widen the road at that spot or shift the bus stop another 25 meters ahead.
The road ahead is a wide 2 lane cement road (with the mandatory cracks) and a tar road alongside. The beauty of this tar road is that it is not plain, it is almost as if someone has made a road all the while ensuring that the natural topography is maintained! The level of the tar road varies from 1 inch to 3 inches below the main cement road. So one one uses this road and the entire traffic is on the two lane cement road. No wonder you often find the mobile advertising vans alongside this road!
A few meters down the road and we reach the traffic island near Kasturba Vasahat. Here the road narrows to about 1.5 lanes! The traffic island near Kasturba Vasahat was made oversize so that drivers are forced to reduce speed due to the congestion and residents can cross the cement road. Why didn’t anyone think about putting traffic lights here? The traffic congestion then motivates impatient citizens of my lovely city to get ahead through the gaps in the traffic. Why weren’t the needs of pedestrians considered while planning the University road? By this I would suggest underpasses like the Garware one at Deccan or the one at Modern school on JM road. But the PMC is intent on building “overpasses” or Foot Over Bridges. This allows it to spend more money! But what they fail to understand is why would a person climb thirty to forty steps and then get down an equal numbers of steps just to cross a road? He would rather get down 10 steps and climb 10 steps! Isn’t this commonsense? But commonsense is a rare commodity when governmental planning is considered.
University chowk – This takes the cake in wrong infrastructure planning. At a chowk where there are 5 roads intersecting whoever got this brilliant idea that a uni-directional flyover would be a part of the solution? Now we have a situation where the flow of traffic towards Aundh and Baner is normal while there is a chaos downstairs. The timing of the traffic signals is such that there is always a jam when traffic proceeding from Chaturshrungi starts moving towards the University before the traffic from Baner passes the chowk. A two way flyover is a must here. Here too, the width of the road reduces by one lane just after the chowk when travelling from University to E-Square. And why have they not relocated the bus stop at that narrow spot?
Range Hill Corner – Welcome to the world of impatient citizens creating a road for himself. Here too a one way flyover has been designed to travel from University towards Modi Baag. (Why are we so obsessed with one way flyovers?) Morever, this flyover is short – it drops just in front of E-Square. Due to this there is always a chaos at the chowk. The traffic from GPP ground wanting to proceed towards Ashok Nagar gets in the way of the traffic proceeding from Mafatlal bungalow to Aundh and also the traffic coming from Ashok Nagar. The motorists travelling from Mafatlal bungalow and proceeding towards Aundh/Baner have to climb up the one way flyover mentioned in the article above. So these people are reluctant to reduce their speed. The people travelling from Ashok nagar too have to encounter a gradient at the chowk and they too are in no mood to slow down. Why wasn’t a two way flyover designed here?
Pune Central chowk – This is the only chowk without any flyovers and predictably there is an overload of unregulated traffic here. People wanting to turn towards and coming from Hare Krishna Mandir road try to find their way through the gaps in the traffic. All this leads to chaos and still more chaos. Here too a two way flyover is the need of the hour. How could this point have been missed during planning?
There are even more troublespot’s in my lovely city. Looking at all this I wonder if India is really the superpower that it claims to be or are we just a country that supplies cheap labour to the world? Are we really competent in traffic planning? From the above examples it is evident that the guys in charge of planning have either done the task half heartedly or they are not competent to do their job. If not why aren’t the blokes sitting in the town and traffic planning department given really good training? If it is the political pressure that’s messing with the planning then why aren’t these so called politicians held accountable? Why isn’t their interference made public?
In all the above examples we are looking at situations that will move traffic fast and help the pedestrians cross the road. The easiest solution would be a very good public transport service. Over the past decade and half PMPL (then known as PMT in Pune and PCMT in Pimpri Chinchwad) was allowed to degenerate. I was in college and remember spending a large amount of time waiting at the bus stops. The bus service was so inefficient that one had to factor in all the inefficiencies before travelling. Infact, the travel within the city had to be planned the way a trip outside city is planned! So the people started buying two wheelers. Later with the economic liberalization and more disposable income we started buying 4 wheelers. All this is putting an inelastic strain on the city.
The CEO of PMPL has been changed so frequently that there have been more than fifteen CEO’s in the past fifteen years. Add to it the interference of the political class – small time corporator’s to the BIG players. Even today if the CEO is given a free hand in running the organization and given the number of buses that he wants, it will be a huge blessing for this polluted city. But it will take another five years for the results to be seen, for in the past fifteen years we have been used to taking our vehicles even to short trips. This will also reduce the problems of parking in the city. There would be less vehicles on road leading to less congestion and less instances of road rage. The happiness quotient for traffic would increase.
I often draw similarities between the behaviour of people and traffic culture in that city. Unlike the West where people walk in lanes, we drive the way we walk. This means crossing a path whenever needed without bothering to see if we are stepping in someone else’s path. During a conversation, we often show impatience of putting forth our point without allowing the other person to complete his sentence. We drive the same way cutting lanes. We tend to speak too fast and too much. We drive the same way … too many of us impatiently trying to get into that one spot on the road in a hurry. It’s as if that we are afraid that someone would steal that vacant spot in the traffic. On intersections we do not respect each other and want our right of way – rightfully or wrongly. When there isn’t a policeman in sight we tend to break the traffic signals en masse. This is a worrying indication in the sense that we no longer feel any guilt at breaking the law when we are in a mob. And then we complain about the goondagardi in politics. Jumping a red light is viewed as heroism rather than feeling guilt for the shameful act.
I am aware that I alone cannot change society or the world, but to make my ownself happy I am going to ensure that I will start with myself.
Like the lines from “Man in the mirror” by Michael Jackson –
If you want to make this world a better place
Take a look at yourself and make the change.
Wow! I started with infrastructure woes and ended up with a pledge!
If there was an award for the worst citizen, Punekars (including me) would win hands down. We do not have civic sense. We throw garbage on the road, we believe that celebrations have to be noisy, we don’t bother to understand if our celebrations are disturbing others, we also believe that all celebrations have to be in the public arena and in general we are never satisfied with anything. Add to this the infrastructure woes. Everyday I have to travel across the city and noticed that there are some very basic mistakes in the planning done. Here are some:
Bremen chowk near Aundh to University circle – At the starting of this road near Bremen chowk the road is narrow. What this means is that when a motorist starts from Bremen chowk he is on a three lane road at the traffic signal. As soon as the chowk is crossed, there is PMPL bus stop. Due to this the road is narrowed down to two lanes and Punekars being what they are immediately change lanes without looking in the rear view mirrors. This regularly and repeatedly leads to small accidents and road rage scenes. The easiest would be to widen the road at that spot or shift the bus stop another 25 meters ahead.
The road ahead is a wide 2 lane cement road (with the mandatory cracks) and a tar road alongside. The beauty of this tar road is that it is not plain, it is almost as if someone has made a road all the while ensuring that the natural topography is maintained! The level of the tar road varies from 1 inch to 3 inches below the main cement road. So one one uses this road and the entire traffic is on the two lane cement road. No wonder you often find the mobile advertising vans alongside this road!
A few meters down the road and we reach the traffic island near Kasturba Vasahat. Here the road narrows to about 1.5 lanes! The traffic island near Kasturba Vasahat was made oversize so that drivers are forced to reduce speed due to the congestion and residents can cross the cement road. Why didn’t anyone think about putting traffic lights here? The traffic congestion then motivates impatient citizens of my lovely city to get ahead through the gaps in the traffic. Why weren’t the needs of pedestrians considered while planning the University road? By this I would suggest underpasses like the Garware one at Deccan or the one at Modern school on JM road. But the PMC is intent on building “overpasses” or Foot Over Bridges. This allows it to spend more money! But what they fail to understand is why would a person climb thirty to forty steps and then get down an equal numbers of steps just to cross a road? He would rather get down 10 steps and climb 10 steps! Isn’t this commonsense? But commonsense is a rare commodity when governmental planning is considered.
University chowk – This takes the cake in wrong infrastructure planning. At a chowk where there are 5 roads intersecting whoever got this brilliant idea that a uni-directional flyover would be a part of the solution? Now we have a situation where the flow of traffic towards Aundh and Baner is normal while there is a chaos downstairs. The timing of the traffic signals is such that there is always a jam when traffic proceeding from Chaturshrungi starts moving towards the University before the traffic from Baner passes the chowk. A two way flyover is a must here. Here too, the width of the road reduces by one lane just after the chowk when travelling from University to E-Square. And why have they not relocated the bus stop at that narrow spot?
Range Hill Corner – Welcome to the world of impatient citizens creating a road for himself. Here too a one way flyover has been designed to travel from University towards Modi Baag. (Why are we so obsessed with one way flyovers?) Morever, this flyover is short – it drops just in front of E-Square. Due to this there is always a chaos at the chowk. The traffic from GPP ground wanting to proceed towards Ashok Nagar gets in the way of the traffic proceeding from Mafatlal bungalow to Aundh and also the traffic coming from Ashok Nagar. The motorists travelling from Mafatlal bungalow and proceeding towards Aundh/Baner have to climb up the one way flyover mentioned in the article above. So these people are reluctant to reduce their speed. The people travelling from Ashok nagar too have to encounter a gradient at the chowk and they too are in no mood to slow down. Why wasn’t a two way flyover designed here?
Pune Central chowk – This is the only chowk without any flyovers and predictably there is an overload of unregulated traffic here. People wanting to turn towards and coming from Hare Krishna Mandir road try to find their way through the gaps in the traffic. All this leads to chaos and still more chaos. Here too a two way flyover is the need of the hour. How could this point have been missed during planning?
There are even more troublespot’s in my lovely city. Looking at all this I wonder if India is really the superpower that it claims to be or are we just a country that supplies cheap labour to the world? Are we really competent in traffic planning? From the above examples it is evident that the guys in charge of planning have either done the task half heartedly or they are not competent to do their job. If not why aren’t the blokes sitting in the town and traffic planning department given really good training? If it is the political pressure that’s messing with the planning then why aren’t these so called politicians held accountable? Why isn’t their interference made public?
In all the above examples we are looking at situations that will move traffic fast and help the pedestrians cross the road. The easiest solution would be a very good public transport service. Over the past decade and half PMPL (then known as PMT in Pune and PCMT in Pimpri Chinchwad) was allowed to degenerate. I was in college and remember spending a large amount of time waiting at the bus stops. The bus service was so inefficient that one had to factor in all the inefficiencies before travelling. Infact, the travel within the city had to be planned the way a trip outside city is planned! So the people started buying two wheelers. Later with the economic liberalization and more disposable income we started buying 4 wheelers. All this is putting an inelastic strain on the city.
The CEO of PMPL has been changed so frequently that there have been more than fifteen CEO’s in the past fifteen years. Add to it the interference of the political class – small time corporator’s to the BIG players. Even today if the CEO is given a free hand in running the organization and given the number of buses that he wants, it will be a huge blessing for this polluted city. But it will take another five years for the results to be seen, for in the past fifteen years we have been used to taking our vehicles even to short trips. This will also reduce the problems of parking in the city. There would be less vehicles on road leading to less congestion and less instances of road rage. The happiness quotient for traffic would increase.
I often draw similarities between the behaviour of people and traffic culture in that city. Unlike the West where people walk in lanes, we drive the way we walk. This means crossing a path whenever needed without bothering to see if we are stepping in someone else’s path. During a conversation, we often show impatience of putting forth our point without allowing the other person to complete his sentence. We drive the same way cutting lanes. We tend to speak too fast and too much. We drive the same way … too many of us impatiently trying to get into that one spot on the road in a hurry. It’s as if that we are afraid that someone would steal that vacant spot in the traffic. On intersections we do not respect each other and want our right of way – rightfully or wrongly. When there isn’t a policeman in sight we tend to break the traffic signals en masse. This is a worrying indication in the sense that we no longer feel any guilt at breaking the law when we are in a mob. And then we complain about the goondagardi in politics. Jumping a red light is viewed as heroism rather than feeling guilt for the shameful act.
I am aware that I alone cannot change society or the world, but to make my ownself happy I am going to ensure that I will start with myself.
Like the lines from “Man in the mirror” by Michael Jackson –
If you want to make this world a better place
Take a look at yourself and make the change.
Wow! I started with infrastructure woes and ended up with a pledge!
Great insight, Unmesh. I used to think I was the only one who saw these very flaws. It's good to see that Punekars are slowly realising the scale of ineptitude of our 'caring' government servants. Regards, Mandaar.
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