The traffic chaos that we are seeing is not necessarily a result of excessive number of vehicles plying on the road or the lack of road width. It is completely a function of the condition that we have left our roads with.
Unfortunately, we have ruined most of our roads to a point where we are compromising the capacity of the facility. Whether it’s an urban street or a freeway, we have let our roads deteriorate so badly that, today we have traffic chaos everywhere. We attribute this mess to either excessive traffic or lesser width of roads, while it’s neither. It’s just the pathetic condition of our road that has compromised the capacity of each lane and thereby the entire corridor. The lane capacity and traffic junctions have been completely compromised because of lack of planning and design
When we look at Vittal Mallya Road and other roads that are under TenderSure, we understand that the city development minister is trying to upgrade the quality of all our roads. We are starting the initiative by upgrading the Outer Ring Road now, and we are going to turn it into an international quality facility where traffic will move at about 70 kilometres per hour with unidirectional service roads. The work is likely to commence in about two weeks and the planning and design exercise is underway.
One has to make sure that the carrying capacity of every road is met, depending on its classification. In traffic parlance, it is called the “level of service”, which indicates the capacity of the lanes and whether they are meeting these targets. In world-class cities like Singapore, the level of service for the lanes is A with the carrying capacity of 1,200 passenger cars per hour per lane. But in Bengaluru, it is only in the range of 100 to 200 passenger cars per hour.
Unfortunately, on our roads, apart from vehicles, there are street hawkers, haphazard parking, debris and garbage covering footpaths and roads and unattended cattle. It is only because we have allowed the road condition to deteriorate so much that we today feel there is traffic problem in our city. If we create road conditions that are on a par with international standards, our traffic problems might just vanish.
The writer is an expert in urban transport
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