Transport System In India
It would be nice to discuss the public transport facilities that we have in our cities.Let me share How much we are satisfied and how we we are troubled.what we think right and what we think wrong.Any action plan for improvement that we would like to Have.So you use public transport or walk? use your own vehicle? ever travelled in Mumbai locals? ever travelled in Chennai buses? Have you used three wheel man pulled rickshaws of patna?
My City has population arnd 7 crores,we have more than 1 billion people in India.All need to travel to there school and colleges,offices and for shopping and what not.There are people who are extremely poor.Do we have comfortable and cheap public transport here in our cities?After traveling in plane for 2 hours and coming to our city from hong kong why does it takes 2 hours to travel in the same city to go from point a to point !!
what about good and fast buses? do we have footpaths to walk?Tamil Nadu has the best public transport in the entire country. There is a saying like, if you get to go only by town buses, you can reach kanyakumari within a day having started from chennai!But that is reverse in case of bangalore.To go from bangalore railway station to kempe gowda you need to travel 1 -30 min in peak hours.
India needs to improve Public Transport System.Yet its transport system sucks big time. People commute on rickety three wheelers called tempos. They are slow and very polluting.If this is the case of Indore- a major city, then what would be the case in most part of the nation. Convenient Readily Availiable Public Transport Vehicles are the need of the hour. The better the public transport is the less the people will resort to cars and motor bikes.It can play a great role in reducing pollution!I.Duee to corruption in tenders the bus services are provided to private companies who dont even pass all PUC tests,stand near a buses exhaust and you will see all black smoke coming out of it.The blackness of smoke signifies more pollution and waste of fuel
the problems are :
1. our population growth does not match our economic growth
2. we do not have public discipline. we like to destroy them whenever we feel like, as if it belongs to some one else.
The country needs:
1. better roads
2. better safety standards in public transport systems
3. better discipline in public life.
Creating better infrastructure is just one side of the story. We as general public must also learn to maintain it. We need to treat them as our national assets, and desist from venting our anger by destroying them.
There r better ways to protest.
Indian Traffic
lets get to the solutions part
1) improvement in public transport
2) observe no vehicle days (of course public transport shud be in place first
3) India being IT/tech savvy brand in the world, this can be further developed by implementing electronic watchdogsm etc.
we have yet to see worse traffic before the 1 lakh cars comes up. lets be prepared before that,
My friend is a Traffic Engineer and upto his understanding, lack of transportation planning is the main reason behind these traffic jams. Just constructing more flyovers or wider roads does not help. We increase capacity by making more roads but if there is poor traffic management like not following the lanes, the effective capacity will be dramatically reduced.Infact, Indian traffic problems can be easily solved, as there are more motorcycles than cars and even more people riding bicycles etc. which is very good thing. Goverment should promote motorcycles, bicycles, and even rickshaws. My believe is that if there is a proper lane system, traffic jams in India can be avoided.
Some people say that people don't follow traffic rules, which is partially true. There is lack of education and enforcement both. If the system is such that a person can get a 4 wheeler driving license sitting at home, how do you expect to be proficient in traffic rules ?Its only the citizens that can do anything to improve India. I have realized that we are the people who talk about politics and politicians, state and system a lot, but, we never do anything to improve it. Not even put pressure on governments to do something. Consider, the protests against reservations, hindu-muslim riots and then protests against it, rallies during elections, etc. We put so much time and effort in these kind of things but don't put efforts to pressurize the governments to improve our living condition.
Back to basic question, how can we as citizens improve the traffic conditions ? First obey the traffic rule as much we know and understand. Second, do something so that drivers license are not distributed like this without giving any basic knowledge about traffic rules, third, formulate the traffic rules and the goverment body can do it.Some people say that the people don't follow the traffic rules. But, I feel that there are no traffic rules in India or are kind of unknown to everybody. As Engineer, traffic rules are those which can be seen visibly on the road, for example, lane markings, traffic signs, traffic signals, traffic police directions.Without, these visible traffic rules on road, even US public can not drive properly, so, forget about India, where there were never these visible traffic rules on road.
I want to add one positive note also here. Indian transport system is quite unique and amazingly efficient too. Indian public is quite dependent on the public transportation system like buses, metro trains, and local trains. We are adapted to these modes of transportation and thats what is quite encouraging.
Improving our transportation system is easier in this respect that we don't have to deal with managing each single car or motorcycle like they have do it in USA. We just have to improve our public transportation system such that people feel comfortable and not furstrated using these modes of transportation. Then, even we will not need much of the infrastructure as they need in USA.Many says that we need more infrastructure, my understanding is that we just need efficient and sufficient enough infrastructure for our country. We don't need to copy USA or European system as it leads to lots of problems in the long range.
Dont know much about European system, but, in USA, there is around 1.3 cars per person. You will find almost no pedestrians, negligible buses as compared to the number of cars here. They have primarily a uni-modal transportation, cars and thats it. It requires more capacity on road, thats why they need to have 14 lanes highway and even thats not enough for them.In contrast, we have multimodal system, a bus houses 50 people and reduces 50 cars on road then, saving space, and ofcourse environment friendly. If we have nice buses, and dedicated lanes for them, so, that they can have higher speed without affecting other vehicles on road, that would be best. Then we should have dedicated lanes for bicycles and rickshaws.
And, consider this that from one car lane, two lanes for motorcycles or bicycles can be made. Thats the efficient infrastructure.Dont You think india's population which is especially concentrated in the major cities the main reason behind substandard transport systems?I live in Chennai and compared to the other cities in india chennai is way better as far as transport systems are concerned be it th bus service or the train service,but the population explosion in chennai has lead to all forms of public transport system being overcrowded to the limit.
That is the reason behind people opting for cars as the the roads are slowly but surely improving.flyovers have been constructed which has lead to smooth flow of traffic in most parts of chennai.Bus service is good but then it is overcrowded to the brim in peak hours except for the signals i havent seen any body follow the traffic rules properly Share autos also cause a lot of congestion as the number of these vehicles is incrasing by the day.
let me ask you whats the maximum speed at which local trains drive ? Can't some research be done to increase its speed, for example, see Japan. Once speed is increased, more trains can be run in same tracks carrying more people in lesser time.Instead, if we build more flyovers, people are encouraged to buy cars or motorcycles. Right now, the traffic conditions seems very good, because those are new. Has anybody shown in the traffic study that what will the traffic conditions on these highways and flyovers after 20 years by doing some population projection and traffic projection. After 10-20 years, when that highway is also over loaded, what will we do then ? Where do we have more space to widen that road.
I have been in Mumbai, and one thing I can say is that only way to improve Mumbai's traffic condition is to have an efficient public transportation.Underground rail system is a good option. But, i don't know how economical it is. Like, the cost of excavation of earth and then putting retaining walls to bear the soild pressure. It can be done for couple of kilometers but, not for entire local train tracks as present in Mumbai.
Actually, the main problem is lack of transportation planning. First we have to identify the problem and see how many people are expected in local trains by 2030 or something. Then, develop couple of alternatives like undergound train or adding more tracks or increasing the speed and what not. Then, the most economical and fruitful alternative can be selected.Consider this, if cost of a traffic study and design for a road is around only 10% of the construction cost of that road.No matter how many roads and highway are built the traffic jam is going to be there. India need some highspeed, low cost, mass transportation method. something like Europes' bullet trains. Jus got to make sure it will be affordable, convenient and reliable. Current rail system is pretty much "something is better than nothing" type of deal.
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