But the same cannot be said about the traffic, Bangalore has been voted the 6th most congested city in the world, a distinction which one can do without. But how did this happen, purely due to lack of infrastructure planning from our city planners.
Some of the key roads are still the same width as they were in 1996 and certainly the traffic would have increase over 15 times in the years gone by. Another distinction that Bangalore has is Speed Breakers which should be now called car breakers, different size, gradient and shape exist every 100-250 meters and one can hardly shift into gears when you are faced with these monsters. The traffic moves at snarl pace, my question to the City Planning Guru's is why then have speed breakers. Most times badly constructed breakers cause more damage than curtailing them. All such speed breakers seldom have any reflectors so at night time due to poor illumination of the roads people meet with accidents as well as witnessed with two of my colleagues who were airborne thanks to such terrible speed breakers.
The traffic signals are yet another cause of huge pile up. Invariably there is a traffic cop who is handling this signal in manual mode and he feels that the `power' rests with him to decide the fate of people waiting for red to turn green. Most halts at signals are close to 2 minute long and that ensures that there's tons of traffic build-up at one end for sure. Is it so difficult to program the traffic lights to work in auto mode based on different timings during day as per traffic congestion? Can the traffic authorities not work out the `green belt' kind of concept which was worked out by the Maharashtra government decades ago, wherein if a driver were to maintain a certain minimum/maximum speed he would get most signals green. They had coordinated the timing.
The other major irritant is `No free left turn'. This is really funny, there is traffic moving from the other side where you're going to take the turn but you cannot take one due this signage and if you do surely there are 2-3 cops waiting to collect fine or whatever they do best in such cases just after the turn. If the same level of energy and efforts are utilized in analyzing the traffic and setting up the signal pattern well including a free left turn most cases there would be fewer pile-ups. Thanks to such pile-ups we are burning millions of dollars worth of fuel just waiting in a traffic jam.
I would love to share my thoughts and ideas if anyone wants to listen with an open mind to try and resolve such issues. So guys if you know of any forum wherein I can present my thoughts to the Bangalore Traffic Authorities, please do let me know.
