What ails Chandigarh traffic

By H. Kishie Singh

The entire disease of traffic — the cause, the symptoms, the remedy — can be summed up in one word. People.

People create traffic jams. Not cars. Cars are carelessly handled tools in the hands of uncaring, foolish and often witless people who use them as an extension of their aggression and macho image.

A car does many things to a person. It imparts a sense of power. Suddenly the man feels he’s a bigger person. Just press down with the right foot and you hear a growl, the sound of unleashed power. You can’t wait to try it on the road. Oh boy! It works. The car is fast and nimble. All cars these days are just that. Soon you learn to overtake from the left and then zigzag in and out of traffic. What a sense of achievement and power. See what can I do!

That’s the way people behave. People who makes the roads unsafe, people who create traffic jams.

Doing all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons.

Chandigarh roads are the widest, the smoothest, the best lit and are designed to be user-friendly. However if the user acts in an unfriendly manner, the road loses its purpose. It becomes a place of danger. It’s the drivers who must learn road manners, discipline and safety.

Some roads have changed. For instance there are no more right turns on Madhya Marg. With the increase in traffic, a right turn against on-coming traffic can be most dangerous. It was stopped. A very wise move.

Chandigarh has the most beautiful traffic islands—or traffic management systems. In a well-organised and disciplined society, a traffic island is usually a dot painted on the road. We have one in Sector 9. Has anyone noticed it? In organised traffic, everybody maintains their distance, gives priority to the right-hand vehicle and traffic. But not so here. Everyone is in the wrong lane, overtaking on corners, often on the wrong side, endangering every other road user. People!

It is not that Chandigarh roads are absolutely flawless. There are some who feel that the S bends in the markets have become hazardous. The rear view mirror does hit a couple of blind spots and this means you don’t see the overtaker who sneaks up to you. Pedestrians are particularly prone to accidents in these areas.

The slip roads are very good as a concept but as the great Henry Ford once said "The inlet (entry) should not be so close to the exhaust (exit)".

Diagram 1 clearly shows a high danger point. The only solution to this problem is disciplined driving. Stick to your lane, be courteous, observe rules and all will be in order.

Signboards are another strange phenomena in Chandigarh. Signs are meant for drivers who come from outside . Locals hardly need directions. So would an outsider be able to decipher ‘Sec, Sect, Univ, PGI. These are excellent examples of Gulabi English. Moreover, these signs are small in size and on the roundabouts. Not easy to read while you are entering a roundabout, fighting traffic for survival. In any case, the signs are so low and so small that a scooterist can easily obscure them.

Ever since Madhya Marg became a "no right-turn road," the signs have become redundant. They are on the wrong side, impart incorrect information and serve no purpose. Yet they continue to be maintained. People have eyes but they see not. People have heads but they think not!

On the Madhya Marg, the speed limit is 65 km p.h. A horrifying fast speed for the most used road in Chandigarh, running through the heart of the city. People must pay heed to this.

The impact of a hard-pressed steel and glass projectile travelling at 65 km p.h. on the soft flesh and bone of a human body, more often than not has fatal results. Why promote this?

There is a strange syndrome in our country. The person who makes shoes, wears chappals. He has never heard of arch support. The tailor who stitches your trousers wears a pyjama and sits cross-legged on the floor. He has never sat on a chair, never cocked an ankle on the knee! I suspect that people who plan and build our roads don’t really use them. They simply build roads. Design, function and practicality have no meaning.

And parking? People just don’t know the meaning of the word. Sector 17 on a Sunday morning is a quiet, clean, tranquil place. There are a few people strolling along and very few cars in sight.

Monday morning the cars come, people driving them. It is here that the herd-instinct in the India breaks down! Cars are left facing all directions. Painted lines are ignored. Cars are parked in the entry-exit points. No attempt is made at sensible and disciplined parking. Cars are abandoned helter-skelter. People do these things.

And will craning cars away be a help? It might be a temporary measure. Indians are notoriously stubborn and lawless. The minute the crane is not in evidence, they will go back to their old ways. Old habits die hard, bad habits die harder.

One reason Chandigarh has such a high car population is the lack of public transport. There could be an easy solution to this. It needs a thought.

Chandigarh must also have one of the highest cycle-rickshaw population for any city in the country. I believe the number of licensed rickshaws is under one thousand. In actual fact there are 12,000 to 15,000 cycle rickshaws in Chandigarh. Organise them. Chandigarh is a geometrically laid out city. It should be easy to lay out North-South and East-West routes. Rickshaws are eco-friendly, non-polluting, silent and do not leave a heap of manure in their wake! There will have to be special routes to serve every nook of every sector.

It will also help the administration keep track of the rickshawala and his tribe.

We should keep in mind that some western cities have opted for the rickshaw as an alternative to the automobile. In the university city of Oxford, England, Erica Steinhauser, a young graduate runs the Oxford Rickshaw Company. Tourists and locals use rickshaws in Oxford. And they went from India!

We have all this staring us in the face and people do not know what to do with it.

Some time ago, Chandigarh experimented with diverting two-wheelers on to the service road. It didn’t work. What has to be done is to segregate motorised and non-motorised vehicles. Any motorised vehicle is capable of 30-35 km p.h. So set the upper limit at 45-50 and all these vehicles will move along at a good pace.

The problem starts when they come up behind a cycle rickshaw, an animal-drawn cart. The car has to break speed, shift gears. This is the first symptom of impending traffic congestion and chaos. Chalk and cheese don’t mix!

A chain is as strong as its weakest link. Similarly traffic, if mixed, will flow at the speed of the slowest vehicle. It is not uncommon, in the city as well as the highway for a fast moving car to crawl along in the first gear behind a hand-drawn cart or a cycle rickshaw.

This move is bad from all points. Firstly, it almost halts traffic. It’s bad for the brakes, tyre, clutch and worst of all it ruins the fuel average. For the extra energy required to move up from first to top gear lowers fuel consumption, raises fuel bills!

Bottlenecks! Chandigarh has some excellent examples of how to build a bottle-neck. In a bottle the liquid is in the bottle and the neck has been designed to restrict the flow of liquid from the bottle.

If the same design is applied to regulate traffic, it will restrict the flow of traffic. See Diagram 2 for a perfect bottle-neck designed road — our very own Madhya Marg!

After a high speed run 65 km p.h. is allowed on Madhya Marg, the car will come to a crawl behind a cart or rickshaw.

This happens at our roundabouts. And no, the roundabout is not the problem. Do not start demolishing Chandigarh’s beautiful roundabouts. Understand and analyse the problem.

Another reason Chandigarhians are so lucky — only 260 km away, down NH1 is the best example of the worst traffic disaster. It is man-made too. The place is Delhi. Soon it will be faster to walk than drive in Delhi. So what is the need of the hour? Traffic education that will lead to some sort of self-imposed discipline and road manners. We need people who accept social responsibility and are well-mannered. We need people of this calibre.

Where are they?