Road widening doesnt always help!
There was this article on the web about research done on traffic congestion. It opens up a new perspective about transport..
"..more road capacity will not by itself substantially reduce congestion. Urbanist Anthony Downs once famously stated that travel demand on freeways rises to meet capacity. If new lanes are added, congestion problems might be lessened in the short run. But that reduced congestion will attract drivers who previously used other routes, traveled at different times of the day, used other modes, or drove less or not at all. New roads and lanes do provide additional mobility and other transportation benefits, but increased road capacity provides less congestion relief than one might expect. "
http://planningresearch.b...
But in this context we need to be aware that the roads in Bangalore are grossly inadequate by any standards..
but the takeaway from this is the part of alternate/public modes of transport in de-congesting roads..
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bile & gut
here is some proof by example that 'you cannot widen your way out of congestion'.
jakarta
seoul
beunos aires
Most cities in the US have a stagerring 30-60% of the city area dedicated to roads and parking and they still have congestion.
All cities have a certain level of congestion irrespective of the level of public transport in the city. different cities have played with different percentages of pub trans infra to priv trans infra to achieve that level of acceptable congestion. boston is slightly road heavy, nyc is metro heavy. but congestion levels are more or less similar. but it must also be said that cities like los angeles, atlanta and houston that are very road heavy have higher than average congestion levels. a respectable level of pub trans is needed to be near the averages.
but irrespective of the level of pub trans, a certain minimum level of road infra is needed for blr. what that is has to be directly addressed rather than all these circuitous debates on trees & pedestrians. if tree lined roads are bangalore's heritage then get very serious about it. acquire land for trees.
see either way we are spending money - directly or indirectly(burning petrol in jams). might as well do it, directly. my dream is 3x3 signal free roads, with half lane markings(to regulate autos and bikes) along all the arteries + orr + icrr with footpaths, magic underpasses for street crossing, bus bays and trees on the median. fix the minimum design standards and repeat them on all the above mentioned roads.
we can curse our autos, bikes, cycles and our heterogenous modes till the buses come home but it is also true that there is no city of the size of bangalore that does not have congestion, irrespective of what model the city has adopted or how homogenous the city's traffic is. theories based on nice and convenient fluid dynamics is fine, but our reality is completely different from those theoretical models and we need practical solutions to help palike engineers not ammo for inteligencia to diss hapless auto drivers, bikers, cyclists and walkers.
thanks
tarle
While it is true that "road
bingo!!
adapt..
The problem with Los Angeles
I believe that more than
Road Widening - only a Quick Fix
I Think its more than time to realise that traffic problems are best understood this way:
Traffic is like a baloon you hold one end and there another end that swells up
Simple as that!
So if you want to manage/regulate traffic you need to add more road (!) OR get the singe drivers and the vehicles off the road, get them to use public transport.
Am from Bangalore and we know fully well that public transport/mass transport is a dream that we all want to have soon enough.
Quick Fix solutions dont work sadly but quick fixes probably get votes and then its some one elses problem.
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Praveen
AkA PhotoYogi
-- PhotoYogi
BMTC itself is the problem
http://traffic-transport-..., and
http://bangalore.praja.in...
Muralidhar Rao
Lot of people are going car crazy, but few are loosing interest
Lot of people have bought cars which were their dream and this dream is becoming reality because of high earning salaries and easy loans. On the other hand, this has become curse to Bangalore. In IT companies, in the lifts, lot of rumours and gossips will be about new cars that are released. Only car sellers come to IT companies and not the 2 wheeler companies. This type of interests and campaign is the problem causing the congestion and thereby demanding wide roads.
Few of my friends who bought cars after doing lot of research on Autocar, Overdrive and BSMotoring were using cars with high passion which only lived for short time. Their travel time became almost 1.5 to 2 times than their commute with their 2 wheelers at the cost of 3-4 times of fuel of 2 wheelers. They switched back to their original 2 wheelers as they felt it was just luxurious inconvenience introduced to ourselves!!. They are just starting their cars for a while daily and going for nearby rounds to keep the car battery healthy. Most of them go in the night drives near their homes. Car batteries are not getting charged enough because of headlights draining out batteries. Their and even my car battery is drying out if the cars are not started continuously for 4-5 days!! My car mechanic also told the same thing and the battery charging customers are increasing.
Car is good only for weekend family drives, not for daily office commut, but, unfortunately, car needs to be taken out for keeping the battery healthy. For this reason few drive the cars to office. Having a car itself is a problem except for rainy season , late nights and early mornings during cold season and ofcourse for a family together outing. It would have been better if we could have had car rentals for self drive at nominal charges like US for weekend and family together drives instead of having our own cars which has become very difficult to use in the Bangalore's traffic conditions.
One thing good about this is few people are loosing interest in cars which is good sign for the Bangalore roads.
dead liability
Today, a car without a chaffeur (and a mobile phone for him) is a dead liability. You can waste hours together finding parking space, and thereafter retrieving your car. If efficient well-connected bus services are made available, I will happily dispose off my cars.
And, most certainly, a monopoly BMTC cannot be relied upon to provide efficient well-connected bus services. We need to have TVS's and TATAs in the picture.
Muralidhar Rao
Road widening - Hyderabad as an example
I have been travelling to Hyderabad frequently on work the las few months. They have (and have been) embarked on a road widening program which has turned the city into a nightmare for pedestrians. There are no pavements left near Panjagutta, SP Road, etc. There is no debottlenecking done. Some parts of the road are probably 10 lanes wide and then these merge into a 2+2 lane flyover (Begumpet station). Absolute bedlam. Traffic does not move. New flyovers look like parking lots!
Not sure how many of you have heard of Peak Oil. Some people predict that we are close to peak oil or maybe past it. Others think it is a few years away. It does not mean we are running out of oil. It simply means that the days of cheap and easy oil are numbered. The people writing about it are not doomsday crackpots, but retired geologists from the big oil companies.
Will post a write up about it with links. I am not sure what the Indian government's position is on Peak Oil or even if they have one. A car based economy is not going to work.
Srivathsa
Drive safe. It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.
study singapore
I have lived in singapore and US I really admire how Singapore addresses its transport problem.
Transport should be a design parameter in the city plan itself.
We have to take a holistic view of the situation treating the city problems on individual basis is a folly the more the city grows the more people will come from the villages.
The long term solution is to enable all people capable of buying land anywhere in India. Presently it is difficult for city dwellers to buy land in rural areas due to land laws.
If we build a few new cities from scratch we can then hope to decongest our present cities and bring down land values so that common man can survive peacefully.
With current land prices an 1000 sqft apt in bangalore costs about the same as a 2500sft home built on a 5000-10000sft plot in many US cities. We could loose our global compettivenes very fast thanks to the rising land prices.
In new cities high vertical growth and small city size should be encouraged. Say 20+ floors for commercial buildings and 10-15 floors for residential buildings. Flats should be big enough so that people dont feel the need to buy plots and build single homes.
govt should only aquire the land and give the planning specs. It should specify the building sizes, and other building parameters. It should allocate land for schools, hospitals, religious places, colleges, commercial buildings. Goods hubs and transportation hubs should be provided. World class water, seweage plants should be made.
the infrastructure costs should be added to the per sft that is built by private companies. Im sure with present costs in Bangalore it would still be a lot cheaper per sft than present rate in bangalore.
two wheelers also aint great..
It is said that the 2 wheelers are more polluting than the cars (not calculated mile on mile basis but on the pollutants released into the atmosphere).
So even the 2 wheeler option needs to be dumped! We were the 2 wheeler capital of India not so long ago..but there is a trend of cars buyin taking over!
Also the problem with cars is parking space..its become a norm that each street has some cars if not all cars parked on the sides of 30 ft road reducing the road to 10-15 ft wide
Considering all this the best approach is for some one/ allof us to walk/ride bicycle to the nearest train station..park bikes there or carry them on the trains to reach our work places!
Mr Madhu..Resp. Guv sir..are you listening!?
photoyogi, what you call
photoyogi, what you call quick fix, can also be thought of the solution of least resistance. like the water in the hills, any unstructured, unsupported by supplemental energy, unconstrained, unaccountable body including bureaucracy will take such path.
the problem is congestion, there are p-number of causes, which are listed in detail by others. With p-1 of these being un-touchable or very very difficult to tackle, people will work on the lone remaining cause- widen roads.
widening the roads, is not a solution at all and is detrimental to the essence of bangalore, but just look around, the constraints on other solutions are basically unsurmountable.
the things is none of the constraints are artificial either. CMH road traders are the ones who are giving up their sottu, even if the alternative they are suggesting is more expensive for the rest of the city. nevertheless they stand to lose. trees are like that too. cutting sites and artificially increasing land value is also like that. we dont fix legal issues and we dont educate how are apartments going to catch up?
metroman, agree with you. we should have moved to flats' culture a long time ago. pune did it, we did not.
Two wheelers aren't great too but better than cars
Two wheelers also aren't great, but, better in terms of fuel savings, space savings on the road - 6 2 wheelers can occupy the space of 1 sedan such as Honda City. Atleast 6 members on a 2 wheeler can occupy the space of 1 person who is sitting in car.
All the 4 wheelers are 4 stroke and even 2 wheelers are 4 stroke now. The amount of fuel burnt in 4 wheelers is very much high which gives an average of 16 kmpl (best mileage in Bangalore conditions) as compared to 55 kmpl in a 4 stroke bike (average fuel effeciency of a 4 stroke bike such as HH splendor).
It is a dream to travel in bicycles to station and take metro to office. But, in reality Bangalore, which is existing today, it is a wise decision to use buses /2 wheelers. Fuel wasted in a Car that too with A/C on is just a national waste as well as waste to our own pocket.
High Grounds Police station gives way to the Road
Just as i had gone to the BDA junction to watch the marking for the Magic Box flyover , One of the engineers told me that the High grounds police station is going down today... I said to myself Ummm..... Finally the recently renovated Highgrounds police station is goin down. Its possibly sad to see this landmark of Bangalore going down but i guess its a necessary evil to accomodate the fresh traffic towards and from the BIAL Airport.
High Grounds Police Station going down
BDA flyover work starts
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Praveen
AkA PhotoYogi
-- PhotoYogi
BDA
BDA junction
Sure its a good idea to have a fresh thread on this i already have fresh updates online feel free to add them in
Thanks!
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Praveen
AkA PhotoYogi
-- PhotoYogi
resize roads..
Then there were days when the corportors and authorities around bangalore wanted to do their bit and made the roads broader, eating up the footpath space and cutting trees..
What did we end up with? Broad road in the middle streach which narrow down at the junctions. We have many examples of this. Instead of solving isues this has created more.
This will come with simple understanding of bernoulis principles where there is a preassure varitation when ever matter moves through narrow constrictions..
Time to reclaim footpath and get the trees back and plan our roads more scientifically! Has anyone observed..we can pass through hudson circle area (3-4 signals) with just one clearing? Thats close to what we need!
junction improvement does always help
Neural networks
but we are not ideal!
Paris has it around arch de tromphe and so does region around cannaught place in delhi.
But what do we do with Blr? We are a group of 'global' halli's....we have junctions around temples and banyan trees..sometimes wonder how the gods feel about the pollution all around! The new layouts should really concentrate on the junctions. Also, some acquisitions around existing junctions to redesign them is necessary!
The other biggest need of the hour is to have the buss bays design in place. This will greatly reduce the traffic jams on all roads..there were days when the down ramp from the sirsi circle flyover was getting clogged in front of the gopalan mall (it was not even built then) everyday..and some one thought about getting the busses into the existing left single lane which was earlier marked for the now deserted toll gate..this solved all issues and there are no more traffic jams there due to bmtc busses. That is the example we need to emulate for all bus stops in Bangalore. Bus bays which can accomodate more than 4-5 busses at a time because we have too many busses on road now!
Wonder what happned to the initiative to make bus bays better..hope it delivers!
Buses only good short term to medium term
the city and its roads