We are developing, expressways, flyovers and making everything
possible so that the traffic moves smoothly and at a fast pace on the Indian roads. We have all sorts of mixed traffic on our
roads starting from bullock carts, cycles, rickshaws, motorcycles in plenty,
some scooters, cars and big cars and finally the buses and trucks, which daily
fight for their space on the Indian roads. Honking, lane cutting, jumping red
light is the norm these days and the motorcycles and cars think it is their
right to change lanes or take a turn without giving any turn indicator or
signal. Probably they think it is below their dignity to do so. The result is a
large number of accidents on the road. On any crossing you can easily see vehicles
standing on or even beyond the zebra crossings. But in all this does the public
or government think for a minute about the plight off the pedestrian. We are
increasing pollution and increasing our import bill on the petroleum products
due to increase use of vehicles even for short distance which can be easily
covered by foot or on a cycle but it is considered unsafe and dangerous. The
reason is the unruly traffic and a very poor planning for the pedestrian or
cycles. On television we are shown a smart city like Berlin where people prefer
to walk or cycle down to their offices from worker to the high official but in
India people think it is below their dignity to walk or to use cycle.
The government is definitely thinking. They have constructed
path for cycles in cities but unfortunately you can find everything on these
except the cycles. Parked cars, hawkers, showrooms and even eating stalls dominate
the place as if they own them but you cannot probably see a single cyclist on
these paths. Similarly, the walking paths are also dominated with the same
people and the pedestrian is forced to walk on road and fight for his space on
these already crowded roads resulting in more death for the pedestrians.
Pedestrian has a right of way in crossing the road but here the might is the
right and the poor pedestrian is the last priority. Crossing the road is a
nightmare even when the light has turned red for road traffic and green for the
pedestrians where it is available and in most of the places it is not even present
signifying that the pedestrian has no right to even cross the road and should
cross on his own risk and responsibility. On expressways there is hardly any
place for a pedestrian to cross over as the foot over bridges is too far apart
or not even present and if present it becomes difficult for older people to
climb them. The end result is that the poor pedestrian is faced with a dilemma
as to whether walk or cycle the distance or to use his own vehicle and in the
end the decision is always use the vehicle as there is no proper space to
either cycle down or walk without risking your life. Crossing the road is like
scaling mount Everest in India, so the end result is that be what others are
and be reasonably safe inside a car or on a motorcycle where you can bulldoze
your way past the other vehicles except the trucks and buses and where the try
to compete with the trucks or buses the result is that they lose but no lesson
is learnt as there is no life left, but who cares except the grieving family
members.
The result is an increase in pollution, respiratory diseases
even in children and an increase in death on roads and less people either
walking on the road or cycling down to work or leisure. Is this the future we
want to give it to our children? Definitely not but then what are the alternatives.
The alternatives are the difficult and hard choices but we can definitely do a
few small things and take a small step in that direction. Increase in public
transport and motivating their use, car polling, ensuring that offices are near
to residences, restricting the ownership of vehicles per person or family, no
parking on the roads, cycle paths or pathways, ensure more use of electric cars
by reducing duty and encouraging their use, sufficient charging points/solar
charging points for them, metro rails in cities, taking big offices out of the
cities and developing residences near then with other facilities, reducing flow
of population to big cities by developing facilities in small cities,
Even in small country like Malaysia or Singapore, what to
talk about advanced countries, it is the pedestrian who has the right of way
and the cars stop well before the zebra crossing to allow a pedestrian to cross
the street. At some places they even have pelican crossings where you can press
a button on the road and the light will turn red allowing you to cross the
street and on the other side you can push the button again to make it green for
traffic to resume. Most of the busy crossings have intelligent traffic
management system using fuzzy logic to manage the traffic better without
creating long queues in one direction and empty road on other side. People take
pride in walking to their destination or use public transport like metro, buses,
etc, to go to work. FOB’s are there in plenty but with lifts or escalators for
use on highways. Public conveniences are
there and they are clean and in good working conditions and food stalls which
sell eatables are kept covered and workers wear plastic gloves, hats and use tongs
to serve food on clean disposable plates with enough bins to drop the
biodegradable and recycles things separately. They encourage people to use
public transportation and curb the use of private vehicles and make sure that
these are available in excellent conditions and in enough quantity. They make
sure that the citizens take pride if they walk, or cycle or use public
transport and ensure their safety and priorit
y over other vehicular traffic.
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