Straphangers United

The City Pulse feature in The Hindu provides an amusing assemblage of views about traffic from the high personages in whose hands our free movement and safety on city roads rests.

Smart city development is definitely not the message that emanates from comments made by M.R.Mohan, the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority’s Member-Secretary. “As the city centre becomes congested, people need to move out towards the suburbs. This would require the complementary facility of easy transport into the city from the suburbs,” he is quoted as saying.

Mr. Mohan’s comments are a direct encouragement to sprawl, and go against the grain of smart city development completely. Density of development, access to services and facilities in the immediate, walkable neighbourhood and development of people-friendly common areas is the goal of all enlightened policy. Apparently, not in Chennai. This can come as good news only to the real estate lobby, of whom many are shady politically-connected speculators.

What one wonders is the logic behind the implementation of the Chennai Metro railway. Such a high density transit system presupposes that it will be possible to use central city space optimally, and build vertically. Conversely, there is not much effort to provide safe, efficient transit links to the “suburbs” that Mr. Mohan is talking about. Even the ambitious Metro, if the Tamil Nadu authorities can run it well, does not connect the suburbs, say, like the commuter trains that run from London neighbourhoods into the city’s geographical centre.

Even more interesting is the comment from the Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Mr. Sunil Kumar. Obviously, Mr. Kumar is very well intentioned, but he badly slides into the statistics trap in his comments published by The Hindu.

Through a strange combination of a claimed reduction in fatal accident during non-peak hours, and a staggering amount of fines collected (Rs.10 crores in 2007), Mr. Kumar is making the case that things are going well on traffic enforcement.

The Hindu’s own statistics given earlier state that fatal accidents are on the rise; there were 550 in 2005 to 1,082 in 2006; in 2007, there were 704 fatal accidents in just six months (it is not clear whether these figures are for as many deaths or as many accidents, which means the deaths could be higher).

It is not difficult to see, and we have been pointing this out earlier, that collection of fines is not a proxy for safer roads. Using statistics mindlessly to state that there were marginally fewer fatal accidents in a hair-split assessment is also not creditable.

As we have been repeatedly emphasising, the cause for so much of bloodshed on the roads is the complete absence of rational policies of urban development and road safety. The comments of Mr. Mohan and Mr.Kumar make it clear that the lessons are far from evident to our administrators.

It is strange, for instance, why no money out of the Rs.10 crores collected as fines has gone into building pedestrian subways in the most congested or dangerous areas. If the traffic police is very clear about high-risk areas, what steps has it taken to invest some of that money in creating facilities to cross roads safely?

I have been witness to people slaughtered by vehicles early in the morning, because motorists will not go by road rules, will not obey lights and there is no policeman on the roads.

For just Rs. 10 lakhs, the traffic police could buy 20 high definition camcorders, and record the road rule violations at major intersections. They could fine motorists with ample evidence, and withdraw licenses from repeat offenders. So why has the Rs.10 crores not helped do something like that?

The pious and platitudinal approach of our administrators to safer and more efficient road systems is pathetic. It displays an unconcern for public welfare, and isolation from everyday reality. 

Volvo-built buses have been operating on some MTC routes in Chennai for a few months now. These ‘head turners’ in an otherwise decrepit and poorly conceived bus service network touch very few destinations, have no frequency worth mentioning and above all, are overpriced for the average commuter.

MTC has been trying to defend these services by putting out PR stories of how a small, luxury-loving group of passengers is patronising the air-conditioned buses, especially now that it is peak summer.

The truth is that MTC, which routinely overloads its ordinary services well beyond capacity and transport permit, appears to be keen not to encourage genuine, comfortable levels of ridership on the Volvo buses (see photo of near-empty bus, a permanent condition). This low patronage has been ensured by overpricing travel, reducing frequency and keeping bus stops so far apart that they are not viable for many commuters.

We can conceive of two reasons for this diabolical approach: once the average population starts showing a liking for the Volvo service, the operator will come under pressure to improve its level of service across the board, starting with airconditioning. That would mean greater investment, which the Tamil Nadu government is unwilling to make, cross-subsidy in ticket sales through different levels of offerings and improved maintenance infrastructures that will affect some of the vested interests currently holding sway in this area within the MTC system. The present poor patronage could be used to scrap the service, if necessary.

Let us look at an alternative scenario for Volvo services. Two major commercial arteries in Chennai are the Anna Road (Mount Road) and the Poonamallee High Road. In the case of the former, it was served creditably in the era before liberalisation by route 18 (Parrys – Saidapet). Over the years, a cash-hungry MTC has extended this route in a meaningless fashion, and deprived the artery of quick and regular connectivity. There are possibilities to introduce a similar route for about 10 to 15 km on Poonamallee High Road from Parrys to Aminjikarai/Anna Nagar. These could be served by Volvo buses.

Strangely, the MTC’s Volvo strategy does not include running such high-demand corridors, where the Volvo service would provide a different class of travel, and if priced right, act as a cross-subsidy element.

What instead has happened is classic MTC sleight-of-hand. The Volvo buses are run on routes so long, and as explained above, so unviable, that most times of day, there are only a handful of passengers. The exception during some parts of day is route A1, from Central to Thiruvanmiyur, but with far fewer stops than optimal.

We therefore demand that the MTC relook its Volvo strategy and deploy newer services on such arteries, to provide a commuting alternative. This will become crucial as other bus companies such as Ashok Leyland also offer their newer models, such as the iBus, (see photo) which boasts of both executive and economy classes in the same bus.

We also seek a shift away from the trend of rigging truck chassis with bus bodies and passing these contraptions off as modern buses, to avail of funding under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. Most of the new buses produced for MTC by poorly qualified bus body builders are of this kind. They are uncomfortable, flimsy, poorly engineered and unfair to commuters, who expect better in an era when personal vehicles such as cars and two-wheelers are meeting global standards.

If ever proof was needed that Chennai’s transport bureaucracy is out of sync with reality, it is provided by the changes effected on April 18 to the Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) operating between Beach and Velachery.

The timetable for 2008 is here.

Displaying a cussed and anti-commuter attitude, the Railway has severely slashed services for most parts of the day, in order to augment the number of services during two hours in the morning and evening. The MRTS, in the imagination of these bureaucrats, is only meant as a peak-hour service, not one that can decongest at least part of the city and provide a good, viable mobility option to its citizens.

Obviously, the Southern Railway and the Tamil Nadu Government have no clue about transport demand management and continue with their penny-wise, pound-foolish methods. The two service providers also think nothing about violating the UPA Government’s National Urban Transport Policy, and National Urban Renewal Mission while making repeated demands for funds from the Centre to upgrade city infrastructure and transport services.

We are shocked to find that during three hours of the day, beginning at 1 p.m. there will be only one service to Velacheri from Beach every 30 minutes; during three more hours divided in the morning and evening, there will be one service every 20 minutes. By any international standard, this is a joke for a city of 6 million people. Most international urban commuter trains and trams operate with two to five minute frequences. Clearly, the Divisional Railway Manager of Southern Railway and the transport bureaucracy in Fort St. George do not have any plans to encourage people to shift to the MRTS from their personal vehicles — if they did, it would have led to augmented services throughout the day, rather than a reduction.

We demand that the Government of India call upon the Southern Railway and the Government of Tamil Nadu to explain why Central assistance should be extended to various projects, when their objectives are not fulfilled by them.

It is inconceivable that the DMK government is capable of running a metro railway or a bus rapid transit (BRT) system when it is working against commuter interests even with what can be called plain-old railway systems and bus routes. The sad conclusion is that the state government finds something unusually attractive in the Rs. 9,300-plus crore proposal for the metro railway, something that it does not in the MRTS and other suburban railways of the city.

Protest this injustice to commuters. Send email to the Tamil Nadu Transport Secretary and the Secretary, Union Urban Development Ministry.

When you transplant some aspects of modernity, like high speed motor vehicles on crumbling old city centres, the result you get is a farcical system.

The neo-liberal love for automobiles and the material life may aid GDP growth figures, but on the ground, it leads to the most bizarre things. Such as policemen who cannot themselves follow the rules. I was following a police jeep today in Pudupet, keeping to the left of the newly painted yellow line.

But the driver of the police jeep was hardly interested in the line painted by his colleagues. He kept violating it, weaving and overtaking other vehicles. I could capture that at one point with my mobile phone camera.

If you feel sympathetic towards the driver in uniform, I can understand. I began by pointing out that you cannot get the best results by plonking automobile nirvana on an arthritic city centre. Pudupet in Chennai is already the nucleus of used automobile spare parts sales, and these wares from the pigeonhole shops spill on the road margins (there is nothing called footpaths here).

So you are talking about people and vehicles competing for space on the road, and the yellow line, with all its good intentions, cannot be obeyed unless you are ready to undertake a repeated stop and go routine behind the vehicle in front of you. Not the kind of thing that appeals to motorists in India in general, and Chennai in particular.

So there you have it. Policemen using taxpayers money to paint yellow lines that no one can follow because there are so many other factors that make these rules meaningless.

If only pedestrians would vote with their feet in the various elections, they would get more space to walk. That is my belief, after watching the unconcern of our elected representatives to the plight of the most numerous and least secure category of road users.

In a country with huge health concerns such as diabetes and hypertension, especially in urban areas, one would expect that our elected worthies, whether in Parliament, in the State legislatures or at least the civic bodies would strike a blow for walkers. They never do. On the contrary, they are forever bending over backwards to serve the automotive lobby, and their friends engaged in the business of building flyovers.

To this indifferent lot (who actually deserve to be described in much stronger terms) the group of disabled people who conducted an audit of walking facilities in South Chennai recently must matter little. After all, in a city in which able-bodied individuals find walking a challenge, what prospects can a group of disabled children and their attendants look for?

With some determination, though, this group can make itself heard. The effort to unite them is being taken by some activists, and they will no doubt be heartened by the work of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS). The MIDS is conducting an audit of how friendly Chennai is to those of us who use Shank’s Pony to get around.

The report on the first such audit published by The Hindu is here.

Like most Indian cities and towns, Chennai is a pedestrian’s ultimate horror. That I believe is the result of treadmills replacing walking paths: our political leaders do not walk along roads, our bureaucrats will not walk, and our opinion makers in other walks of life, including diabetologists, cardiologists and orthopaedicians, will also not walk. If they did, we would have wide footpaths and useable ones at that. Instead, we have ever widening roads and flyovers to carry ever increasing numbers of Scorpios, Innovas, Taveras, Sumos and what not,  with a cavernous appetite for our meagre, broken and crumbling footpaths.

As I think of our mad vehicular traffic that insists on flattening any civilised system that threatens to slow it down, I remember the contrasting scenes that I witnessed in the university town of Cambridge in the UK a decade ago. The narrow roads in Cambridge had, even in 1998, rising bollards — mechanically operated foot-high dividers that would rise up from the road surface after allowing only public vehicles such as buses to pass using sensor technology – in specified areas.

In our most crowded city roads, why cannot there be rising bollards that function once every 5 minutes or so,  allowing pedestrians to cross? Our metallic monsters would fear these rising metallic barriers, and automatically slow down, reducing our blood pressure and enabling everyone, young, old and disabled, to cross without fear. This is technologically possible in cities that are ready to spend billions on other infrastructure. Money cannot be the problem.

To me, pedestrian rights is an issue which is only now attaining critical mass. And we will keep up the pressure.

The service level of Chennai’s Beach – Velachery MRTS is being augmented from April 18, 2008. Read the report in The Hindu here. The full time-table is here for download as Excel file.

As it turns out, The Hindu got the wrong end of the stick. The services are being augmented during four hours of the day, but at the expense of services at other times. Read our post on that issue here.

The 2008 timetable is here as a pdf download.

The Hindu today carries details of the air-conditioned MTC Volvo services, with some information on the timings; the item also talks about 20 more buses to be introduced in the current financial year, which means it could be anytime in 12 months from now.

The timings of existing services are at best indicative, because they are rarely adhered to. The route information is useful.

Also read this post on the A 1 service operating from Chennai Central to Thiruvanmiyur.

Apparently, Chief Minister M Karunanidhi has a special place in his heart for the Kodambakkam bridge, which is now old, poorly maintained by the Chennai Corporation and far from inspiring. Even when attention was lavished on the new North Usman Road flyover, this bridge did not get even a coat of paint, and its surface is pitted and uneven.

When he spoke at the inauguration of the North Usman Road flyover, Mr. Karunanidhi narrated an anecdote about the frustrating and even deadly delays involved in crossing the Kodambakkam railway gate in the days before the bridge came up.

As narrated by him, the story is that when Mr. M.K.Stalin was a boy, he swallowed something dangerous, sending the family, then staying in the Zachariah Colony area, into a panic because it was impossible to cross over until the railway gate opened. Some well-wishers suggested that the boy be given bananas to reduce the risk of injury from the object that he had swallowed, until he could reach a doctor.

As we know, the story had a happy ending, and traffic now moves on bridges and mini-flyovers not just in Kodambakkam but in many other places.

Of course, a number of people are puzzled that not much has been done to change the decrepit and dirty nature of the space under the Kodambakkam bridge, in spite of nostalgic memories, fond recollections and the location of Murasoli as well as the Kalaignar television offices in that zone.

It would help so many families, if more houses could be built for the low income groups, a policy that was followed vigorously during the early DMK governments. Strangely, with rising economic prosperity, such welfare has actually declined, in keeping with the fall in national spending on health in real terms in the post-liberalisation era.