Dear Bengaloorean (is that what you are called?),
This letteroo is addressed to all the people who live in, work in, drive in Bengalooru City or anywhere else for that matter. I'd like to call your attention to a bunch of monotonous white lines on the road that you drive on day in and day out. If you've noticed, they are (usually) evenly spaced and form apparent divisions or "lanes" on the road. How many lanes these helpful lines decide to split the road up into, depend on the width of the road.
Now that you know what I'm talking about, ever wondered why the authorities spend crores of Rupees every year putting them on our roads?
No, certainly not because it makes the road look good
No, certainly not because it give you a centering tool to stay right on it as you drive home after that wild night out.
No, certainly not for you to zig-zag through the gaps on your two wheeler.
No, certainly not for your dog to walk in a straight line on your morning walks.
No, certainly not for you to switch on your high beam and light up the reflectors.
And MOST IMPORTANTLY: NOT FOR YOU TO IGNORE!!
So then, why were these expensive dashes put on our roads in the first place? To create lanes.
Think of them as creating an exclusive space on the road for your car or vehicle. As long as you keep your car within those lines, you should be safe, you should be able to drive faster and you will not put anyone else in harm's way. So, if that sounds so good, you are wondering what the catch is? Well, the catch is that you need to go one behind the other in the "lane" and follow the vehicle in front of you at a safe distance. It's not that hard is it? Have you seen ants at work? They walk in one neat file one behind the other. That's exactly what you need to do.
What you don't do in the lanes is cut in and out in either direction as you please. To "Switch" lanes, you switch on your indicators (left for left, right for right), glance in the near view mirror, make sure you are not going to rub shoulders with another car and then smoothly switch lanes and then stay on the lane. Important: you switch only ONE lane at a time. What if you do see a car too close to you in your near view mirror? Let him pass and then follow his tail and enter the lane.
Really, it's pretty simple. But you are in a hurry right? SO IS EVERYONE ELSE!! But guess what? A little consideration, a little DISCIPLINE, (we're better than ants you know?) and calm driving will add more kilometers to your mileage, more money to your wallet, more peace in your mind and less stress on the road. You will also realize that if everyone starts doing this, traffic will flow much much faster and there will be far lesser accidents on our roads today. I urge you and implore you to please please try it out and make a difference.
If any of my other learned readers want to contribute to this article, please feel free to..
Happy Driving Bengalooru!
Nov 3, 2008
Oct 20, 2008
Bottleneck Infrastructure
Our city planners and engineers do have a sense of humor in designing our roads. While road widening is a phenomenon that is so widespread in our city today, there seems to be little thought or advice taken from traffic experts on how these should be designed. What we end up with is BOTTLENECKS.
Here's the Wikipedia Definition for starters:
Metaphorically a bottleneck is a section of a route with a carrying capacity substantially below that characterising other sections of the same route. This is often a narrow part of a road, perhaps also with a smaller number of lanes, or a reduction of the number of tracks of a railway line. It may be due to a narrow bridge or tunnel, a deep cutting or narrow embankment, or work in progress on part of the road or railway
When bottlenecks exist due to construction activity or due to a temporary situation like an accident, I think that is perfectly normal and understandable. What I do not get is many of roads have bottlenecks built into the design. This is going to be the way it is, for a long time. Oh, my, god!!
To me it sounds like common sense that when a road has 4 lanes (in India, our good people upgrade these to anywhere from 6-8 lanes on the fly) and as you get near a junction or because there is a structure spilling over from the pavment, the road suddenly has only 2 lanes. So, you have a situation where 6 parallel vehicles are trying to squeeze (or race) into these 2 lanes. This leads to compression as more and more vehicles try to squeeze through the narrow outlet. A great example of this is where you go under the KR Puram flyover as you leave the city.
Another very usual reason for a bottleneck is unusable lanes. These are caused by bad roads, manholes sticking out into the road, rubble on the streets, dirt piling up in the corners (and we don't want to dirty our tyres, see?)or most usually "on the street parking". Fixing the roads alone and making available all the lanes a road is supposed to have will make a huge difference.
I wonder what our planners do when they go and visit the US to "study" traffic management. My take is that they do not even have to go there. Just sit on your PC and login to Google Earth and "visit" all these cities. The latest renditions are so good that you can even go down to the street levels in large cities and check out the place. Why can we just just simply copy the US??
I pray that God gives all of us the courage to endure the madness, I pray that God give our planners some common sense to create good infra, I pray that God gives all of us traffic sense and the ability to be considerate to our fellow drivers. I pray that God makes horns disappear. Amen.
Here's the Wikipedia Definition for starters:
Metaphorically a bottleneck is a section of a route with a carrying capacity substantially below that characterising other sections of the same route. This is often a narrow part of a road, perhaps also with a smaller number of lanes, or a reduction of the number of tracks of a railway line. It may be due to a narrow bridge or tunnel, a deep cutting or narrow embankment, or work in progress on part of the road or railway
When bottlenecks exist due to construction activity or due to a temporary situation like an accident, I think that is perfectly normal and understandable. What I do not get is many of roads have bottlenecks built into the design. This is going to be the way it is, for a long time. Oh, my, god!!
To me it sounds like common sense that when a road has 4 lanes (in India, our good people upgrade these to anywhere from 6-8 lanes on the fly) and as you get near a junction or because there is a structure spilling over from the pavment, the road suddenly has only 2 lanes. So, you have a situation where 6 parallel vehicles are trying to squeeze (or race) into these 2 lanes. This leads to compression as more and more vehicles try to squeeze through the narrow outlet. A great example of this is where you go under the KR Puram flyover as you leave the city.
Another very usual reason for a bottleneck is unusable lanes. These are caused by bad roads, manholes sticking out into the road, rubble on the streets, dirt piling up in the corners (and we don't want to dirty our tyres, see?)or most usually "on the street parking". Fixing the roads alone and making available all the lanes a road is supposed to have will make a huge difference.
I wonder what our planners do when they go and visit the US to "study" traffic management. My take is that they do not even have to go there. Just sit on your PC and login to Google Earth and "visit" all these cities. The latest renditions are so good that you can even go down to the street levels in large cities and check out the place. Why can we just just simply copy the US??
I pray that God gives all of us the courage to endure the madness, I pray that God give our planners some common sense to create good infra, I pray that God gives all of us traffic sense and the ability to be considerate to our fellow drivers. I pray that God makes horns disappear. Amen.
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