Straphangers United

Reading about the death of a 70 year old woman who was trying to cross Anna Salai at dawn, that is the question that strikes us. Can any of our top political leaders cross a major Chennai road at any time of day?

The answer is a clear no. This uncivilised city that is soaked in Tamil pride is the most hostile to people on foot.

The story of a 70 year-old-woman first being knocked down by a biker on Anna Salai, and then, as she attempted to get up and walk to the side, being fatally hit by an MTC bus is representative of the barbarism that our leaders are perpetrating on citizens.

Such is the concern of the MTC for accident victims that the 56 year old bus driver apparently ran away, perhaps to cry over the shoulder of his supportive Union comrades.

We are sure that MTC will oppose any compensation that a Motor Vehicles Tribunal will order after many years to the kin of this old woman, who worked as a maid.

The report on the incident in the Times of India is here.

Our bureaucrats in the DMK Government, in the Chennai Corporation and our VIP-obsessed men in uniform should hang their heads in shame, but that is a trait that is generally absent in Dravidianland (or for that matter, in Aryanland up North, and equally, under AIADMK rule). We are not partisan. We believe in good politics and efficient administration. We also believe in Unions and labour rights. But with incidents like this one, we just feel disgusted that India’s automotive revolution is now an uncontrollable monster.

The plight of Chennai’s pedestrians and the indifference of the CMDA and the DMK Government is highlighted in today’s Times of India in this piece. The importance given by the Times to Chennai’s descent into civic chaos is welcome. However, it skims the issue by ignoring two components of the problem: the rapacious expansion of road space at the cost of pavements, and the planning of new infrastructure without any scope for pedestrian facilities — that includes the overbridges built by Mr. Karunanidhi in his previous government and those being built in the current regime.

The DMK’s Minister in the Union Government, Mr. T.R.Baalu does not fare better. He has been talking of putting in pedestrian facilities in the gargantuan grade separator at Kathipara junction as an after thought; it was not part of the design.

A civilised city must have facilities for walking, matched by public transport. This London scene near Trafalgar shows good practice.

Another fundamental concern that the media consistently fails to recognise is the faulty planning of the Chennai Metro rail. This ambitious railway is supposed to run along the busiest arteries of Chennai, Anna Road and Poonamallee High Road (EVR Salai). Without space for people to enter and exit stations, just how can a metro work?

Has anyone from the DMK or AIADMK even looked at the architecture of metro rail networks anywhere in the world? All civilised cities have wide footpaths or sidewalks that are a necessary adjunct to a metro rail system. But under the rule of the Dravidian “kazhagams”, Chennai has consistently lost its pedestrian facilities. Will the DMK put the pavements of 10 or 12 feet back along Anna Road and Poonamallee High Road? Or should people hoping to ride the Metro jostle their way through traffic and lawless autorickshaws and tourist cabs?

On another front, The Hindu today reports on the power situation in special coverage, pointing to the very troubling times faced by industry, in comparison with domestic consumers. Again, the special feature does not explain why the DMK regime has failed to augment supply through off-the-shelf non conventional routes, such as solar power for lighting. In fact, Chennai is a metropolis that does not have an “urja” shop (Hindi for energy shop) which the Ministry for Non-Conventional Energy Sources says it is running in most cities. This shows that Mr. Karunanidhi and the Minister concerned, Mr. Arcot Veerasamy have, at best, a weak commitment to solutions on lighting.

In response to our request for information, the Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency stated in an email, “Lr.No.3183/SE/TEDA/2005 dt.24.06.2008 as follows: “Aditya Solar Shop was opened in the name M/s. Aditya Neema Solar shop, Wallajah Road, Ground floor, Chennai. It is not functioning at present.”

A group of experts whose comments on Chennai’s transport mess are reported by The Hindu today (read it here) show how policy is aiming for the long-term, which is positive, but is missing out on here-and-now initiatives. The speakers rightly rue the terrifying impact of automobiles on Chennai’s roads, but lose their focus in their comments on what could be done.

Chennai's roads can be dangerous for all forms of transport users...This odd-sized cargo, visible to CCTV cameras, was spotted on Anna Salai.

Perhaps the strongest criticism must be reserved for the MTC. The Managing Director of Chennai’s bus monopoly, Mr. Ramasubramanian has stated at the meeting held to consider the CMDA’s Second Master Plan for Chennai, that his corporation is “holding discussions” to introduce smart cards that can be used both on trains and buses.

Coming from a government-owned bus operator that will not even operate services from MRTS stations, this is ridiculous, if not dishonest. We have for long been arguing for separate bus routes to start from and others to cover the network of MRTS stations. When we filed a Right to Information Act petition with MTC, the same bureaucracy told us that it was up to the Railways to provide facilities for MTC buses. In many MRTS stations, such facilities already exist, but are ignored by MTC.

Secondly, the MTC pretends not to know the solution to attracting more riders to its services, including the so-called value-added ones. It does not sell the monthly travel cards, (Travel As You Please passes as they are officially referred to) through the month. If anything, its system is hostile to those who want to buy the cards. They must go to specified bus termini at particular times of day and only during the first fortnight of the month. This can readily be replaced with a seamless pass issuing system that works through the month, is available widely (like SIM cards for mobile phones that are sold in thousands of outlets) and covers every single bus run by the MTC. If the MTC wants some extra money for its air-conditioned Volvo services, it can sell a separate pass on similar lines, although the answer would be to sell one pass that covers all, with differential tariffs for service.

Obviously, Mr. Ramasubramanian knows that all these solutions are workable right now, and therefore, they are not very convenient. He would rather talk about the pie in the sky. We condemn this attitude.

Again, the Southern Railway has done little to improve its own side of things. The MRTS services have in real terms been scaled down, not increased during the last reorganisation of the schedule. There are 122 services, but 24 of them are available spread over four hours of the day, while during another four hours, the service level drops to a ridiculous 8 trains in all, or two per hour. By any metropolitan transport standard, this is nothing but laughable.

We also think the Walking Classes Unite campaign, which got off to a good start recently with a walk for pedestrian rights along the Marina should be taking up the cause more seriously. One swallow does not make a summer, and one walk is easily forgotten in the din and bustle of a city of a few million people. Our view is that there should be regular walks each month, in the most congested parts of Chennai.

There are several prominent individuals interested in civil liberties, public health and green politics, and they could be invited to participate in these periodic events. Incidentally, the blog advertised in the media widely by WCU for its previous meeting has suddenly gone password protected.

Lastly, we would like to emphasise that Chennai’s mobility problems arise primarily from the indifference of the middle class. This car and two-wheeler bound section of Chennai residents are throwing away the future of their children, and their own — let them remember that when they turn 70, they will be ineligible for driving licences. By then, without a sustained effort, our roads will be heedlessly altered to suit the needs of more and more marauding automobiles. They will then have no space to walk, even if they wished to. They will have none to turn to at that point.

It would be better to return to sanity today.

The Times of India has devoted a lot of coverage today to the death of a pedestrian on Harrington Road under shocking circumstances. Allegedly responsible is a motley group of men driving around in an SUV. This road monster hit the 48 year old pedestrian, Dayalan, who held a modest job as a book binder.

After initially putting the injured man in their abominable vehicle (ostensibly to convince onlookers that they were trying to help), the men drove a little while on Harrington road and abandoned the bleeding man on what passes for a footpath. He was left to die there and his body was discovered only the next day.

The report of this incident published by the Times is here. Another accompanying piece on the plight of pedestrians is here. The shattering death of the man as narrated by his mother is here.

But we would like to go beyond the immediate question of this accident and ask who is in charge of traffic and road users’ rights in Chennai?

Judging from the comments made by Mr. Sunil Kumar, Additional Commissioner of Police as published by the Times, his department has only a cursory interest in the matter. In fact, he makes some aloof statements about the need for more pedestrian crossings (which anyway are solely his responsibility and within his power to designate) when even those that exist are not serving their purpose; he cheekily advises pedestrians not to violate road rules (which may apply to a minority of jaywalking road users, but is a preachy and insincere approach that grates in the ear for the rest of us).

Obviously, nobody in the DMK Government has read much about road safety, infrastructure designed for safety and so on. This sort of illiterate Government is unsurprising at the level of our political class, but does not the Sardar Patel Academy provide some kind of academic base to its recruits who become our police brass? ; going one step further, what is the sense of accountability that the Mussoorie academy teaches to its famed IAS trainees who become the bosses of even our IPS officers as Secretaries to Home, Transport and Public departments?

Just recall the death a few days ago of a man who drove his two-wheeler the wrong way on the newly opened Kathipara Junction Grade Separator cloverleaf because there were no boards to indicate anything. Obviously, the Tamil Nadu Government and its hand-holding UPA are not very keen about the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic Signs.

Our Dravidian governments (Kazhagams of every hue) are so thick skinned that even a report in the media about a man’s death due to official incompetence and failure does not elicit so much as an apology. You have the spectacle of a smug IPS officer inspecting the bridge the next day, in the company of the man from the NHAI whose job it was to put up the sign boards in the first place, to guide motorists. No one in authority even bothered to visit the family of the dead man and offer their apologies, or provide relief to the family. The middle class is in such a frenetic hurry, that it sanctions road rule violations all the time if it is self-interest. You have illiterate drivers at the wheel of powerful vehicles, speeding along without giving a thought to their potential for death and destruction. Such is the progress we have made with infrastructure building, motorisation and GDP growth in this wretched state (and, conceivably, elsewhere).

This shameful evolution of our cities, including Chennai, can ultimately be traced only to the stigma attached to walking on roads, a complex that all our leaders suffer from. How many politicians can imagine walking to a particular event, without the benefit of an SUV ? Not too far behind in this status display are our IAS officers, the IPS, the other babus and following the trend they set, our businessmen, doctors, technologists, academicians, journalists…in short, everyone except those who are at the very bottom of the social ladder. As a result, we only have cars, cars and more cars, a few rickety buses, antiquated trains, and of course, no footpaths.

We would think this is the reason not a single project conceived for city development has any provision for pedestrian facilities. No pedestrian subways are being built. Mayor M. Subramaniam’s lame announcement of putting up escalators at several places remains a ride to nowhere and people continue to die on Chennai’s roads.

This is the state of Dravidian-party rule.