[low_bass_makker]

humare india me 100 me sai 99 baiman but phir bhe hamara bharat mahan.

[snaronikar]

Originally Posted by khaadu75

To change that .. we need to start from ourselves so instead of having TBHP meet where we drink - eat - abuse - burn fuel and go home , why don't we get together and do something that will make a difference ???? Any takers ....

I'am prepared for this. If this will really help to build our nation. I'am working in such a department from past 13 years and still I prefer to work honestly.

[varun.ppl]

Guys! I agree with all of you with my utmost heart.

I believe that the flyovers, wider roads have made life easier for us.

But my mind & the statistics dont believe them.

Before 2000 when there were minimal flyovers but the traffic was also minimal. From my house in Vikas Puri to Soth Ex it took abt 40 odd mins in the evening abt 5-6pm.

After 2000 when the flyover construction era began te situation got worse but ppl said it was for the betterment. I learnt to drive too.
The same distance the same hour the time abt. 1 hour.

Now, 2007: Flyover era is going on. We have a majestic Flyover at DK. 3 more flyovers on the Ring Road from DK to Soth Ex. (viz. Moti Bagh, HYATT, AIIMS) hope i hvnt forgotten anyone.

I am now driving for the last 6 years. But still it takes abt 40 mins to cover the same distance.

Building infrastructure is not the issue.

"The major issue is imbibing Traffic Sense" . The flyovers are there but no proper signages. Whatever signages are there most of them in English. ( i m not an illiterate, B.Tech Grad. ) but many scooterists, auto wallahs are(No offences meant).

People coming from outside Delhi feel like they have entered a maze.

Damn Autos driving in the fast lane. The cyclists & most importantly the bikers zip-zapping like Johnnny boy create a lot of havoc.

It is our own responsibilty that we drive according to the rules.

Kochar sir, As u said that trafic in London or NYC is worse than ours in peak hours.

Bro, i have been to Germany abt a couple of times. & i must tell you that the roads are abt 4 lanes. (2L & 2R). People mind the rules. Last time when i had gone to Dusseldorf the taxi driver drove abt 300 miles in abt a couple of hours. He was constantly doing 160+MPH(He had a Volvo though). I was like amazed. He blew his horn just twice during the 300 miles. Also within cities people maintain lane driving.

for small outings like to the market & all they prefer bicycles to cars. U know abt the various advantages.

This all happens in the all the big cities like NYC & SF too.

Its high time that we all take initiative from our side to make India shine. The govt. though corrupt or wahtever has provided us with a decent infrastructure now its our duty to maintain the same

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by vkochar

That is Peak time traffic Buddy !!!

Have you ever been to London & New York ??? Try walking in the market at 4 PM or catch an underground train in London ( Oxford Street ) - You will call Delhi Heaven then !!!

I live in London for more than 3 months in a year - I think India is not that bad at all if you compare it with other big metros of the world. Population / Traffic / Pollution is every where.

Have you been to Mumbai ??? Mumbai has the crappiest traffic in the world - Crawling !!!

Delhi has roads so wide that you can very well compare it with any good city in the world ( Ban the Buses & Ricks - and it's going to happen very very soon !! )

Why don't you try comparing your drive from Dhaula Kuan to Noida 4 years back and compare it with today !!

Be happy that there has been such a vast improvement in Delhi.

Roads so wide but traffic jams at all times.
Comparing my drive from Dhaula Kuan to NOIDA (I used to drive a lot in 1999), I can say that things were a lot better earlier. As to Delhi, Gurgaon traffic, it is getting worse by the day. The evening rush hour now extends upto evn 9PM.

As to London, of course there is congestion and there is congestion charge. My brother lives there all 12 months (except for holidays in India), and usually he finds it much more disciplined and fast, except in Central London.

The difference between India and other countries is that India has lower number of vehicles, bad roads, no traffic management, and no will to improve things.

[Harbir]

traffic jams are a part of life of every major metropolis in the world, regardless of whether its in a developed country or not. Traffic jams will never go away because they follow a natural resource consumption phenomenon. Which is that demand will grow to exceed supply. No matter how many roads you build, you will always have traffic jams because the roads encourage economic growth, that leads to the growth in the number of cars on the road, and soon you have a jam again.

That said, if the metropolises of bombay (I refuse to say mumbai) or delhi are are getting choked with jams despite having only 1/50th as many cars on their roads as Los Angeles or New York do, we have a serious growth constraint.

There is no getting away from the reality that the biggest, most immediate impediment to India's growth is a lack of power, transport, and housing infrastructure. You should see the megacities, the megahighways, the mega power projects that china has built and continues to build.

[Thad E Ginathom]

London is impossible because this generation of ruling politicians are absolutely anti-car. They take major percentages of roads and make them for buses only --- and it is enforced by cameras. The last time I got snapped by one it cost me equivalent Rs4,000. They narrow roads in every conceivable way. Parking is impossible, and when it can be found it is absurdly expensive. Very often you can't even park outside your friend's house, unless he can give you a ticket, as the road has been reserved for those with permits (for which one has to pay).

The traffic congestion in London is not as bad as it was: because the policy of 'punishing' those who drive into the city is working. But that is not a success in my book.

Here I am; a foreigner living in India, and committed to living in India. Yes: I think there is a lot wrong with the India Shining campaign: it is based on a section of the economy only. It ignores abject poverty in other areas of the economy. It says nothing of the farmers' suicide rate for instance. I don't doubt that the section of the economy it does highlight is doing fine; long may it do so.

The traffic situation in Chennai is fast becoming as bad as London was, with 20-minute journeys taking an hour or more. I don't know that I want to see the same kind of discipline on our roads here as in London though. That jumble of traffic that fills a Chennai main road road, of perhaps, nominally, three lanes, turning it into a four of five lane road, ultimately moves faster and more effectively than those Londoners, sitting rigidly in their two or three lanes and never, but never, using the wrong side of the road, even when it is empty!

[esteem_lover]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

London is impossible because this generation of ruling politicians are absolutely anti-car. They take major percentages of roads and make them for buses only --- and it is enforced by cameras. The last time I got snapped by one it cost me equivalent Rs4,000. They narrow roads in every conceivable way. Parking is impossible, and when it can be found it is absurdly expensive. Very often you can't even park outside your friend's house, unless he can give you a ticket, as the road has been reserved for those with permits (for which one has to pay).

Maybe that is done to discourage people from owning lesser number of cars per family. I have seen that each family owns one car per person in these cities & more often than not more than one person commutes to the same part of the city but in 2 different cars.

[supercars]

Originally Posted by varun.ppl

the taxi driver drove abt 300 miles in abt a couple of hours. He was constantly doing 160+MPH(He had a Volvo though).

I think you mean 160 KMPH because very few Volvos could do over 270 kmph and a taxi doing that then why the hell would I buy a Mercedes or a Beemer.

[amit]

Talking about Mumbai, we keep hearing about Mumbai makeover and the thousands of crores being spent to improve the infrastructure but what are the ground realities? 50+ flyovers were built but it still takes 2 hours to cover 20 kms in India's commercial capital. Another 16-20 flyovers are being planned but are they going to make any difference? I don't understand the point of making flyovers that take you over a intersection. What about cars coming from the side roads? They still have to crawl under the flyover. Why can't a flyover have entry and exit points on them?

Also, the infrastrucutre being built now should have been in place 15 years back. Whats the point of making infrastrucuture like that? The government should be making infrastructure for the next 50 years or at least make provisions to create more lanes and so on. Whats the point of making 6 lane GQ's. That should have been done 15 years back. There are already dhaba's and resorts coming up along the GQ's. 10 years from now the government will wake up to the need of more lanes and will then spend thousands of crores to relocate what easily would be majority of illegally built dhaba's, restaurants and resorts along our highways.

In every city the problem is of supporting infrastructure. There are malls, office complexes, multiplexes coming up but the road outside is still the same as it was 20 years back. How can that road, as wide as a gutter at best, handle all the traffic? There are banks in my area that open to the main road. There is no provision for parking even a tricycle outside. Why did the municipality or government give permission to open up that commercial building? What then happens is chaos. Left with no choice, cars and bikes park on the road, sometimes there is double parking and a supposedly 3 lane road is turned into a single lane one. RTO will promptly make the road a no parking area and mint money by towing away cars.

What about the Bandra Worli sea link? Everyone, including the media, talks about how we can zip from Mahim to Worli in 15 mins compared to the one hour it takes now. My question is what happens after I zoom down from the sealink into Worli? Have the authorities planned anything after that? Imagine the scores of cars that will zoom from Mahim into Worli in 15 mins only to get stuck in a even bigger traffic mess simply because the governement with all the super brilliant IAS officers couldn't forsee the future mess. Why is it that a layman like me can see the hell coming up but not these city planners?

Here is another idiotic stuff done by the government. The main road outside my office has been concretised. While doing that the road has somehow risen in height compared to the side roads inside MIDC. Come monsoon and all the water will flow down onto the side roads into MIDC resulting in water logging. How come the government couldn't think of this?

But, are we any different from the government? Here's what I experienced at a mall in Navi Mumbai yesterday. There is a chaat house on the ground floor. You have pay at the counter and take the coupon to the counter where chaat is made. People line up to collect coupons and then all hell broke loose at the chaat counter. The person that managed to shove the coupon closest to the face of the chaat maker got his dish first. Why do we have to behave like hooligans? Why can't people line up at the chaat counter and wait a minute or two more for their dish? And was the owner sitting at the counter bothered about the chaos? Hell no.Why should he? Just like the government that builds mall's and housing and commercial complexes and lets you crawl along the supporting infrastrucuture that they conviniantly forgot about, the guy got his money and forgot about his customers. The solution actually is very simple. Considering that Indians in general are hooligans, all that needs to be done is to have a barricade the width of just one person near the cash counter. The same barricade should stretch to the chaat counter. This way the person that pays first gets his dish first. But why should the owner worry about supporting infrastructure. He got his money now let the hooligans fight among themselves. And yes, the people out there were not uneducated or illetrate. They were all educated. Maybe doctor's, software engineers, businessmen. Yes, the group also included a couple of old couples.

And I never understood the reason for Indians sticking to your back while lining up. Go to any multiplex and the person behind you sticks to you so tightly that there is no place for even oxygen between us. Every month at the toll plaza, I have people sticking behind me to buy toll passes. While paying at the Food Bazaar counters, people stick behind you like long lost lovers. Why!?!

[vasudeva]

I thought I should give some comparisons between India and China and some observations which seem reasonable.

Both Chinese and Indian cities have far less overall roadway supply than American or European cities. For example, the average roadway density in 2003 was 3.16 km/sq. km in Beijing and 4.42 in Shanghai, compared witj 10.7 in London, and 9 in LA. For India, measuring roadway supply instead as a percentage of total land area devoted to roads, Indian cities report quite a range of values: for example, 21% in Delhi but only 11% in Mumbai and 5% in Kolkata (2003 figures).

Ths situation in India and China is more chaotic and road more congested also because of the diverse mix of transport modes forced to share the limited roadway space already encroached. Slow non-motorised modes such as bicycles, rickshaws, pedestrians, and animal-drawn carts obviously slow down motorised modes. They also cause safety problems, and affect road capacities, speeds, and other operating characteristics.

Although Chinese cities are also congested, the situation is not so extreme in China, since extensive rights of way are provided for cyclists and pedestrians on the main roads. Even then, cyclists are so numerous that they compete with motor vehicles for roadway space, especially at intersections, where cyclists necessarily must cross the paths of motor vehicles. That causes both congestion and collisions. Moreover, most of the older, narrow local roads in Chinese cities lack separate rights of way for pedestrians and cyclists. As in Indian cities, that forces them to share the road with motor vehicles.

The overall roadway situation is considerably worse in India than in China. As already noted, Chinese cities generally provide far more extensive and better facilities for pedestrians and cyclists. Most roads in Indian cities are narrow, with only one lane in each direction. Only major arterials in large cities are four lanes or wider. Most roads lack sidewalks, thus forcing pedestrians to walk on the shoulder or the roadway itself. Many roads are in a dismal state of disrepair, often riddled with potholes, uneven, and unpaved. There is a general lack of modern traffic signals and signage, and even where they exist, travellers often ignore them, thanks to corruption and a lack of enforcement by police.

The situation in China is not nearly as chaotic. Most Chinese cities have comprehensive traffic signals and signs as well as some degree of traffic management, and many cities are modernising these facilities. While traffic regulations are now strictly enforced in large Chinese cities, drivers in small cities often ignore traffic regulations, and taxi drivers, in particular, are notorious for running red lights and stop signs. In all Chinese cities, both large and small, taxi drivers weave in and out of traffic to save time and pick up and drop off passengers. That causes both congestion and safety problems.

[Torqy]

India is NOT shining.
The Italian Marble floor in that bloody politician's house is SHINING.

When i pay tax, i expect certain things in return. You wouldn't walk into a dept store, pay the cashier some money and walk off, do you? You BUY the things you want since you paid for it.

What we lack is PLANNING. What's the use if we build a 3 lane road which after 2 kms becomes a ONE lane road? The idiots who plan the roads don't even know simple maths. If a SINGLE LANE road brings X amount of traffic to a junction, then a THREE LANE would bring 3X amount of traffic. So it's utter stupidity to build a 3 lane road if you haven't planned what's after the 3 lane section.

Examples for Bangaloreans.
1. Old Madras road. NGEF to BENIGANAHALLI railway under bridge.
2. Old Madras road. Tin factory junction to KR Puram Railway station. (I really want to meet the idiot who designed the Tin factory junction and the KR Puram rly station junction. Pea brain!!)

India will never become a great country UNTIL we learn to respect each other as human beings. Look at the way we treat each other on road.

India might be shining for those upper class tax evading people. (Note: It's NOT tax evading upper class. It's upper class tax evading. They're different). But for middle class tax paying people like me it's NOT shining.

-- Torqy

[bblost]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

bblost, yes, I'm afraid you are the only one who doesn't mind a traffic jam!

We'd probably agree about red traffic lights,though. I always take them as an opportunity to (Like the old ones used to say) Relax!

my motto:
Conquering traffic, one foot at a time.

[finneyp]

Originally Posted by Torqy

Examples for Bangaloreans.
1. Old Madras road. NGEF to BENIGANAHALLI railway under bridge.
2. Old Madras road. Tin factory junction to KR Puram Railway station. (I really want to meet the idiot who designed the Tin factory junction and the KR Puram rly station junction. Pea brain!!)

Even I want to meet that great Architect and Engineer who designed this junction and that dangling bridge!

Towards KR Puram, the traffic below the bridge is 5 times more than that on the bridge!

And from KR Puram to Tin Factory junction, it is X junction, as the traffic from Whitefield/Ring Road take right to rejoin the Ring Road & the traffic coming down the bridge take left to join the Old Madras Road!

[Jeep]

Agree with the statement 'India is not shining'.

Look at the infrastructure space - Roads/Water supply/Electricity/public transport system - roads in particular

Roads- I have lived for a year each in 3 of the world's richest countries. Not comparing with the infrastructure that they have there, but just wonder why such a huge population (i know that the percapita GDP is low) with such a massive middle class should have so less roads? We all buy cars and bikes and are taxed heavily on them. There is an 'infrastructure cess' built into the prices of fuel in Karnataka. Where is all the money going? It is for sure that there are lots of inefficiencies in the system (mostly in the form of corruption, I believe).

Electricity - Totally different pricing in different states. All that I can say is that since it is a basic necessity, the Govts price it low to win elections. Overstaffing is another reason. Another big factor is that collection of dues is very poor (in some states it is as low as 40%!). Theft is euphemistically categorised as 'Transmission & Distribution losses!' How will the elec board invest in new projects when they are in red?

water - Very basic necessity- hence, ridiculously low priced (except in Blore). Nothing more to write about. We should stop thinking that free water is our 'birth right'.

Public transport system - It is profitable in Bangalore (the only city in India??) because it is priced adequately (rather a bit too much?) and via some 'innovative' measures like 'no conductor'. However, the condition of some of the buses are pathetic. On the other hand, why do we need Volvo buses that cost about 65 lakhs(?) to ply between the city and Electronics city? Wouldn't an air conditioned TATA/AL bus suffice (that should be less than half the price of a Volvo). I smell a rat there.

The elevated highway project in Blore is a white elephant. There are/were only some bottlenecks where flyovers were required. Instead of that, a 1000 cr flyover will benefit only those few who work in EC and drain the tax payer. A meto rail would have made more sense.

Stopping for now.

[Lalvaz]

Nice post Elito, I get your point, but this seems to be degenerating into a useless debate with some ppl trashing India and some ppl supporting it.

I think all of us are already aware of the problems in India. Question really is that we need to hold people accountable for this? Perhaps a forum to interact with the concerned authorities to ensure that adequate attention is paid to handlind traffic ? Anyone wants to take a lead in coming up with some solutions?

Personally I think its high time we got off our chalta hai attitude and started holding our government accountable for their acts of omission and comission.