Road widening is a daily reality for most people in developing cities. In a place like Bangalore, it is also a daily question (well for some anyway) . Is it really the best way to cope with growing traffic?
I've put down some thoughts on why I believe it should always be the LAST not the FIRST way to manage traffic.
1. Road widening leads to tree cutting. Trees purify air, lower temperatures, improve the water table, provide shade, shelter birds... I could go on. Cutting a single tree has an irreversible impact on the environment that we need to consider.
2. Road widening needs land acquisition. Very often this land has been purchased by people using their life's savings. Sometimes it is used to run shops or businesses and people's livelihood depends on it. Before taking it away shouldn't the people planning, implementing or advocating road widening be able to say in all conscience: 'I'm sorry. I tried everything else. I had NO OTHER alternative' ?
3. Road widening cuts into pedestrian space. The road belongs to all kinds of users including cyclists and pedestrians. Also, it is a fact that in areas with very wide roads (Delhi in India, most cities in the US) it is less than safe to ride two-wheelers or cycles. When we make roads unsafe for pedestrians, cyclists and two wheelers, we put more cars on the roads, for which we need more road space and more widening - it's a vicious cycle!
4. Road widening has been going on for the last 3 years in full swing but with negative results. The reason is not hard to find, every extra inch of road space has been occupied by a new vehicle that has been added to the roads.
Which brings us to the bottom line. The real issue plaguing our roads today is not less infrastructure but inefficient use of existing infrastructure.
Every traffic jam is marked by the huge number of cars carrying only ONE passenger. Clearly the available road space is under utilized.
The natural conclusion is that better utilization of road space through car pooling, shared taxis/autos, more dependence on buses and other public transport as opposed to private transport would improve matters.
True, it would not be as convenient as driving your own car, playing your choice of music or leaving at the exact second that is convenient to you.
But against that we should weigh the environmental and human loss that is a result of road widening and its natural corollary - tree cutting and land acquisition.
Which is the better way? Which one should we try first?
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3 comments:
Agreed that protecting the environment is need of the hour. But road widening sole is not the culprit.
Also if already widened roads have not de-congested the traffic it is because of bad traffic management.
In India I have never seen a decent pedestrian space on narrow roads , infact I have witnessed footpaths being added to roads as part of road widening (Vivek nagar is the example of that, there was no footpath before they widened the road).
Obviously road widening alone can not solve the problem the same way adding only public transport will not solve the problem. Infact most of the times the shared autos etc. spread more pollution due to ill-maintenance than privately owned vehicles.
So things need better planning and execution and experts who should decide what public transport to add on which route and which roads genuinly need widening due to increased traffic (which again is due to new office on that route , malls , increased population , new residential areas etc. not solely because people taking cars to office)
Thanks for your comments vani.
In the new road widening plan, 95 roads will be widened over the next six months and 30000 trees axed. Road widening may not be the only culprit but it is the MAJOR one!
widened roads have not decongested simply because, like i said more vehicles have been added to the city - according to RTO 4000 per day!
my point was not that road widening should never be done but that it should always be done LAST, after trying every other option like I mentioned in my post. Please give me your views on that!
Lastly, in delhi all buses have become CNG and are the least polluting vehicle on the road, while carrying most passengers. Just today, we saw an indigo emitting noxious fumes! Cannot generalize here...
June 26, 2008 3:18 AM
Road Widening -- is it even a solution in India?
- With no lane discipline, do you think wide roads will help in traffic movement and not create a mess instead. I always see people moving smoothly on one ways and 2 lane roads because they do not get a chance to move across lanes. Doesn't that say - we do not require wide roads?
- With people driving always on the right side of the road (however wide), how will wide roads help? On "wider" roads, the side lanes are either used for parking or by road side sellers
- With bottle-necks, speed humps & dugouts at every 100m, do you think wide roads will improve speed of traffic?
Road-widening may be a solution but a lot of things have to improve, firstly the mindset of people -- "me, my car and my time" is not supremely important. And when one starts thinking on those lines, road-widening might not seem like the first & foremost solution for solving traffic issues.
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