Namma Raste - road use efficiency

Read in an email this morning that on 19th July 2008, a workshop on “Reclaiming Bangalore’s roads: Namma Raste” was jointly organized by Environment Support Group (ESG), CIVIC Bangalore and Alternative Law Forum at Vidyadeep, Ulsoor Road, Bangalore.

The context for this meeting was the PIL against BBMP over widening of 91 roads. Apparently, the claim is that the widening projects will increase average vehicle speeds from 8-10 km/hr to 40 km/hr (ref: material from ESG/HU - these should soon be up on ESG website, so I will save myself copy paste jobs here).

The workshop had over 90 participants, ranging from representatives of traders’ associations, resident association federations, and organizations working with the differently abled & for the urban poor, groups working on pedestrian rights, architects, schools, colleges and members of Hasiru Usiru.

I know there is a set of people who consider extreme environmental activism as anti-development. Put those biases aside for just a moment, and think about road widening efforts or flyovers that have come up in your area. Then, if you commute more than 5-6 km, tell us if your commute time has improved. Think and tell if there is enough proof that these projects help. Save for just a few flyovers, they don't!

I can give you an example from my area. My wife takes 45 mins today to do 9 km from Whitefield to IRR/Domlur area. It used to take asbout the same time (50 mins) to do Whitefield to Langford town two years ago. What has happened over last two years? Well, let me list them all

Airport is gone, and hence a lot of vehicles.
There is a new 6 lane railway overbridge at Marathahalli
Marathahalli market area road has now been 'widened'.
Airport road itself saw some limited 'widening'
The road from Kundalahalli to Marathahalli too has been 'widened'

Despite all this, the speeds have reduced, ~ 20 kmph, to 10 kmph in this example. When you discuss this with self proclaimed urban development experts, the reason given is - there are more people and vehicles now.

Okay, alright. But isn't that the problem we should be attacking here!? More you build, more they come - that just can't be the excuse for misguided investments with undefined RoI (return on investment). The effort has to be to reduce usage of private vehicles for office commute. Investments have to be go towards managing whatever road resources we have. Past all that, we can look at adding more road area.

Lets put a number to the efficiency with which we use our road resources (I will post a whole lot of pictures to prove this point). Remember our talk of entropy, turbulence and all that? Every 200 meters, you either have

encroached or missing pavement, leading to pedestrians on the road
car parked on the arterial road (tons at Marathahalli)
Some construction happening, with construction material spilling on to the road
Bikers riding wrong side, autos criss crossing, blah blah blah - you know all this too well.

I would say that Bangalore's road use efficiency is probably about 40%. What I mean to say is that if the traffic and road space was managed to perfection, we can handle the same number of vehicles with 40% of road space.

Now, do widened roads add to this efficiency? 5% increase in road area gives you 2% increase in capacity to handle vehicles. That 2% increase in capacity to handle vehicles can come from efforts to increase road use efficiency itself. The question of course is -

How I arrived at these numbers, plus
would it cost less to increase road use efficiency.

Lets collaborate on a paper right here to arrive at rough numbers on road use efficiency. But I am willing to bet that #2 is true. Its not just that it will cost less to invest in increasing road use efficiency, but, this approach has better guarantee of success than investing in widening more roads and building more meaningless flyovers.

I have not rested my case yet. I need help to build that road use efficiency number :)