One-way roads have proven to be a useful method for easing traffic flow in major cities, especially in congested areas like the central business districts. The usual methodology followed is to have parallel roads beginning at common areas and ending at common areas have opposing flows of traffic. The network formed by M.G. Road, Brigade Road, Church Street, F.M. Cariappa Road and St. Mark’s Road in Bangalore can be taken as a prime example. In Calcutta, one can consider the network formed by A.J.C. Bose Road, Park Street, J.N. Road and Shakespeare Sarani as an example. In Bombay, the Nariman Point area is interspersed with arterial roads like the Madam Cama Road, Marine Drive, Jamshedji Tata Road, and all streets connecting these are one-way.

Chennai, however, has a peculiar aversion to one-way roads. Over the last decade, many attempts at creating one-way roads have failed. Three prime examples that can be considered are: (1) the network formed by Cenotaph Road, Anna Salai and Chamiers Road; (2) the network formed by T.T.K. Road, C.P. Ramaswamy Road and Chamiers Road; and, (3) the network formed by R.K. Mutt Road, Thiru Vi Ka Road, Kutchery Road and Oliver Road. Out of these experiments tried out by the Chennai Traffic Police (CTP), only the last one is still functional, resulting in considerably smoother flow of traffic and significantly lesser snarls.

Looking at the two failed cases, the first one was actually very suitable to the concept of one-way flow of traffic since Cenotaph Road, in particular, is narrow, and has had a significant road area reduced by the construction of an elevated road to connect it to Gandhi Mandapam Road at Nandanam. The CTP did introduce one-way system at this network, but backtracked within two-months due to continuous breaking of rules by the motorists using these roads.

Similarly, the one-way network formed by C.P. Ramaswamy Road, T.T.K. Road and Chamiers Road had to be discontinued due to the same reason.

In all fairness to the users of the road, both the above networks were ill conceived by the CTP: the starting and ending points were illogical. In the first case, a small stretch of Chamiers leading from Nandanam to Anna Salai was allowed to be two-way for the benefit of a small high-end residential area. In the second case, the entire stretch of the T.T.K. Road from Chamiers Road to Alwarpet was one-way, but C.P. Ramaswamy Road was one-way only from the St. Mary’s Road junction to Alwarpet.

But users too took advantage of the bad design, and stretched their breaking of rules to the extent of the roads not monitored by the CTP.

Perhaps using public hearings and with more stringent monitoring of traffic, the CTP will be able to introduce one-way traffic flows to ease traffic snarls and build-ups in many congested areas of Chennai. Obviously, one area begging for some intervention is T. Nagar.

Guest writer: Arindam Jana is a Researcher with the Small Enterprise Finance Centre housed at the Institute for Financial Management and Research.

Transparent Chennai is partnering with Chennai live 104.8 radio station to talk about ways in which citizen’s suggestions on traffic problems on Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) can used for resolving traffic woes. The additional traffic commissioner of police has promised that best suggestions will be implemented. Following is the information on challenges and recommendations suggested by the traffic police incharge of the OMR stretch from SRP Tools to Semancheri post:

This road is being maintained by TNRDC (Tamil Nadu Road Development Company). The traffic controlling instruments like traffic signals, speed breaker permissions, mid block and zebra crossings including monitoring advertisement hoardings etc which is usually maintained by the Chennai Traffic police in the city is being maintained and permitted by the TNRDC on this stretch.

There are totally 9 policemen and 11 signals to monitor the stretch between SRP Tools upto Semanjeri Checkpost which is about 30km stretch. On an average there are over 1 lakh vehicles passing Sholinganallur and between 20-30 cases of over-speeding cases are booked every day. Apart from this 5-10 accidents are reported every week on this stretch. Following are the signal points and their conditions on these stretches:

Table 1 Signals on OMR

Source: Chennai Traffic Police.

Following are the major traffic bottlenecks and accident prone zones as observed by the traffic police area in-charge.

1. Kandanchavadi: Near YMCA school; this is the most accident prone spot with over 10 fatal accidents last year causing death. Although there is a FOB (Foot over bridge) very few people use it. As TNRDC does not allow speed breakers on the road or a mid block crossing. Jay walking is quite prevalent as the school caters to over 1000 students. There is an unapproved mid block crossing carved out by regular commuters and an unauthorised bus stop at which the buses stop.

2. Life line Hospital signal: It is a traffic bottleneck because of free left and as the turning is a 2 lane road.

3. Span between SRP Tools and Lifeline hospital: This is an accident prone zone due to wrong side driving and jay walking. The discontinuity of service lane from SRP tools towards Mahabalipuram causes the confusion amongst the motorists travelling in wrong direction.

4. Before Toll Gate (Hyundai showroom Perungudi Bus stop): Traffic bottleneck due to heavy pedestrian traffic. There is an unauthorised median opening and during the peak period the road is completely taken over by the pedestrians.

5. Between Perungudi Bus stand and Toll gate: Although there is a Foot over bridge the incomplete service road on one side hampers the access. The FOB is also incomplete and hence pedestrians resort to jay walking. They have created an opening in the median and the crossing is a cause of caution for motorists.

6. Corporation Road (Madras Industrial Gear) Thoraipakkam: The vehicles turn at this junction and as there are no signals or policeman on a regular basis and thus withough proper regulation it becomes a traffic bottleneck and a soft spot for accidents.

7. Seevaram: FOB is not being used and has become a traffic bottleneck.

8. MNM Jain Engineering  College: The median is broken and student jaywalk to cross the roads. During college hours (closing and opening time) peak hours it becomes a traffic bottleneck.

9. Mettukuppam bus stop/ FOB and opposite to ASV Suntech Park: The FOB is not being used and the unauthorised median opening for pedestrian to cross causes a traffic bottleneck

10. Karapakkam PTC bus stop: There are no FOB, no crossing (mid block or zebra) and presence of heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic. It is an accident prone zone.

11. Between Mahindra Satyam and Accenture at Aravind Theater: There is a FOB and a mid block crossing but due to heavy motor and pedestrian traffic it has become an accident hot-spot.

12. Sholinganallur, between (Kelambakkam and Thoraipakkam): It has become a congestion point lately because the vehicles going towards Tambaram have a close to the turning. Although it was shifted by 100m the clinging of buses together has made it ineffective.

13. Diamond Engineering Company: The road bends and because of poor visibility many accidents occur. As there are few villages in the surrounding people cross randomly and thus it has become an accident prone area.

Recommendations:

1. The height of the median throughout is less than 2feet which eases Jaywalking. As there are several villages, institutions (schools and colleges) and Industrial area on both sides of the IT corridor it cannot be stopped. So increasing the median height will dissuade them to cross at grade and use the FOBs or cross at signals and authorised mid block crossing.

2. Incomplete service roads and limited mid block crossing has forced the motorists to drive on wrong side to the nearest signal or crossing. This is difficult to monitor considering only 9 policemen are manning these roads. The drivers are booked for dangerous driving and every day the traffic police collects 9-10,000Rs for over-speeding and dangerous driving. The police have recommended the TNRDC for putting speed-breakers and giving mid block crossing as per their observations but TNRDC takes a long time to respond.

3. Large number of wine shops in this stretch has caused drink’n’ drive problems. The drunkards also sway on the roads and are victims of accidents. The TASMAC shops should not be allowed to have bars or drinking areas at nights. It needs to be monitored regularly.

4. MTC buses do not stop at their assigned space, causing traffic disturbance as commuters dependent on the public transport cause commotion running all around the buses. In Sholinganallur the bus stop was very close to the signal which became a bottleneck and is now sorted out by pushing the stop by 100 meters away from their location. This was due to heavy traffic and short time gap between arrivals of 2 buses which eventually becomes a chain.

Through this effort we wish to have a better participation of people in resolving the traffic problem of the city. We are soon going to have an OMR layer in which you will be able to placemark the location of the traffic problem and suggest your views to resolve the problem.

Roshan Toshniwal

The Chennai City Traffic Police has started an interesting new initiative. A Facebook page that the CCTP started last year has once again become active under the initiative of the motivated new Deputy Commissioner of Traffic Sanjay Arora. Every day, the CCTP updates their status multiple times, indicating where traffic is moving slowly, where buses have broken down, and answering people’s queries about arcane traffic rules. The page, like the Delhi Traffic Police page, also fines vehicles that are in violation of the rules based on photographs sent in by users.

On the whole, most people are big fans of the CCTP’s initiative, and are commending them for improving the information flow and for taking prompt action on citizen complaints about problems. However, the page also sees a fair amount of abuse from users, who complain about corrupt traffic cops, and complain (quite rightly) that illegal parking takes place because there is almost no legal parking in the city.

Whoever is updating the CCTP’s Facebook page seems also to be extremely frustrated with the system. One update said

“Some people have pointed out that, why a single car breaking down necessitates alternate route. Most of our roads are carrying many times more than their capacity. In another words they are really saturated and traffic moves very slowly during peak period even without any obstruction on the road. In such conditions even a single event like, vehicle break down, maintenances activity, accident, rain, funeral processes, marriage in nearby kalyanamandapam etc. have adverse impact on traffic and the cascading effect goes up to couple of kilometers including various connecting roads. … The concept of peak hour has also got extended to peak period with non peak period shrinking at a accelerated rate.”

You can almost hear the weary police officer sighing as he writes this!

On Friday, the CCTP announced a new initiative, in which free sms’s will be sent to all those who subscribe with regular traffic alerts of the sort given out on Facebook. (For those interested in these updates, send an SMS with the text “JOIN CTP” to the number 09219592195.)

It is unclear, though, how useful these updates will be. Will people avoid using certain junctions if they are backed up? Are there enough alternate routes and detours that will enable traffic jams not to proliferate if people are given advance warning?

For Transparent Chennai, what might be more interesting is to use the data collected here on traffic jams and bus breakdowns to see whether there are patterns emerging. Are there particular areas which get backed up all the time? And can we fix those places using better planning?

Nithya V Raman

In the blog “Road Safety: Who is responsible for it?” I had highlighted the accident rates are spiralling every year and had reached its peak in 2008. The year 2008 data showed a 1.5 time increase in the number of accidents and 5 times increase in the number of car accidents in the city.

Analysing the total accidents from 2005-2010 shows that 24 arterial roads in the city account for 47% (12400) of the total reported road accidents in the city with the Inner Ring Road, Anna Salai, E.V.R.Salai and Thiruvotiyur High Road being the leading accident hotspots as 21% of the total accidents in the city takes place on these roads. The following table shows a list of roads with the number of accidents and the affected parties.

Source: RTI Traffic Police Chennai

A further analysis reveals that pedestrians and two wheelers together form 73% of the total affected people in a road accident. It also shows that the bulk of car accidents take place on these arterial roads as it accounts for 54% of the total car accidents in the city.

Source: Ananlysis of RTI based on data received from Traffic Police Chennai

The question arises is what causes these accidents? The arterial roads have several signals at almost all important junctions but still it continues to be a nightmare for people. What infrastructural facilities could be installed to reduce accidents in these spots? What precautionary measures are being taken to mitigate accidents in these areas?

The corporation has big plans of making a world class city by widening roads and cruising traffic at a high speed. High speed causes reckless driving resulting in accidents. Every day the newspaper reports road accidents in the city and the majority of them are due to the negligence of the driver, over-speeding and overtaking. The statistics above reveals that pedestrians and the two wheelers are most vulnerable to these accidents. Thus it is necessary to take a stock of pedestrian infrastructure and the causes leading to accidents involving them. India has the highest mortality rate 8.7 people die per hundred thousand population and fourteen per ten thousand vehicles.

How do we account for the loss of precious human resource to this cause of death? A study by the Planning Commission estimates the social costs of road accidents in India at 3% of the GDP. Imagine spending this money on infrastructure which could mitigate this situation. Precaution is better than cure and the government should keep this in mind before spending further on this infrastructure.

Roshan Toshniwal

1. An article in Hindu looks at Chennai’s increasing traffic woes and the response to this problem:

http://hindu.com/2010/12/21/stories/2010122161690200.htm

Building more and more flyovers can help ease traffic congestion only in the short run. Various studies have shown that flyovers actually increase congestion and the total number of  automobile trips made per day, in the longer run.

2. As new bicycle lanes appear in New York city, people complain about the loss of parking space and constricted traffic:

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/21/are-new-yorks-bike-lanes-working?ref=opinion

3. Worried about the increasing air pollution, France looks at alternate ways of reducing it: boat transport, eco friendly bicycles, strengthening public transport:

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/156874.html

4. Government plans to restrict private cars in Dhaka to reduce traffic jam:

http://dhaka-rickshaw.blogspot.com/2009/09/call-for-restriction-on-growth-of.html

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Why are we the only ones looking at building flyovers at a time when the rest of the world is propagating environment and people friendly solutions? Why would we go for solutions that have actually failed in the past?

Somya Sethuraman

For me, walking is freedom, it’s liberation. Earlier, when I got tired of staring at the computer or a book, I would always go out and take a walk. A long quiet walk to refresh my mind, let the thoughts flow freely and treat my eyes to the lush green surroundings. For me, walking is also social equity, a time when people from various walks of life walk together on the same platform.

I thought that walking was one of my birthrights, that nobody had the authority to deprive me of it. But, all that was before they killed the greenery around me and reduced the width of the footpath to build a new flyover next to my house. When I asked why, they said that it was an answer to the heavy traffic problem in the area. Now, I prefer staying in the enclosed walls of my house, for my safety and to avoid the noise and pollution from the increased traffic flow in my vicinity. I am a citizen of Chennai and I am deeply disturbed by the loss of walking space within the city. How many of us share a similar story? Countless, is my guess.

Reports confirm that increasing traffic leads to increasing number of road accidents, increased noise, injuries, pollution and congestion.¹ Chennai has been no exception and has been facing similar consequences because of the increased traffic flow within the city.

A World Bank report states that in developing cities across the globe, walkers comprise over a third of the modal share of all trips made.² In Chennai as well, the same ratio applies, where, out of a 100 people, 30 make their trips by walking. Yet, development projects for the transport sector have largely focused on flyovers, bridges, connecting roads, highways, and public and private modes of transport. Footpaths and pedestrians get almost no mention in these projects, nor in city budgets. And even if they do get a mention, they are largely ignored when transport plans are executed. When we were looking for data for the Transparent Chennai map on pedestrians, the only information that we could find was on the budget allocation (zone-wise) for footpaths and works completed/in progress (just one figure). However, there is no way of verifying if the money is actually spent on such works and whether they are being spent judiciously. If the above could be verified, then we could get down to the next level of checking the quality of these footpaths. However, even a layman like me can tell you the worsening condition of the footpaths within the city.

This is pretty surprising considering that each and every one of us is a pedestrian at some point of time or the other. Why then are road transport projects not pedestrian centric? How is a flyover built without taking into consideration the loss of walking space? Norms specify that footpaths should not be less than 1.5m in residential streets and 3.0m on major roads with commercial activities. Why don’t we see these norms being implemented? The City Development Plan for Chennai Metropolitan Area confirms that capacity of almost all roads in the present system is reduced due to poor quality of riding surface, inadequate pedestrian pavement, poor lighting conditions and lack of properly designed intersections. Permanent and temporary encroachment of footpaths and carriageways has worsened the situation. If this isn’t enough to justify the need for a pedestrian friendly city, then one could also look at the increasing pollution levels within the city.

Reports state that the air pollution levels in Chennai are well above permissible limits (suspended particulate matter (SPM) ranging from 264 to 451 against the permissible limit of 200, carbon monoxide (CO) ranging from 1908 to 4198 μ-g/m3 against the permissible limit of 2000), leading to health hazards that none of the citizens can escape.

It is important for the city to amend the existing transport plans to give utmost importance to the interests of pedestrians and bicyclists which constitute the majority within the city. If majority of the commuters within the city comprise of walkers and bicyclists, then there is no reason as to why the interests of these sections of the society should go largely ignored.

Contributed by – Somya Sethuraman, a Researcher for the Transparent Chennai team of the Centre for Development Finance, IFMR

Certain things that I noticed about Chennai in the three years that I spent here are quite peculiar. First, busy roads are suddenly closed down, unannounced, for renovation or for a ‘VIP’ visit. All cities in India experience this, but in Chennai it happens too often to go unnoticed. Second, there is no clear definition of a ‘main road’. Buses, trucks and all kinds of other heavy motor vehicles seem to pass the narrowest of all roads with houses on either side. What is more shocking is to see kids playing on these roads, completely oblivious of the traffic around them. Third, this city doesn’t seem to invest in pukka roads. So one fine day when it rains, the road disappears and all that is left of it is potholes. In spite of all this, I love this city because of its beaches, its simplicity and its reasonably good public transport system.

One evening, after a tiring day at work, I decided to walk back home from Teynampet to Gandhinagar in Adyar. Starting at around 7pm, I expected to be home in an hour’s time. Teynampet to Gandhinagar should be around 6-7kms but the benefit of walking is that you can walk through one-ways, traffic jams and even blocked roads. So for all you know, walking back could in fact be faster than traveling in a motor vehicle within the city! While not much seems to be in place for the pedestrians in this city, it is made worse by the pedestrians themselves who mostly jaywalk. The end result is chaos, with sudden brakes being applied by vehicles and long leaps of narrow escapes made by pedestrians from one side of the road to the other. Since I had left office at the peak hour when most are travelling back home, I knew it was not exactly going to be a pleasant walk. The first leg of my walk was from my office to Nandanam. What really upset me during the walk were the uneven and discontinuous footpaths. Every commercial building/housing complex on my way seemed to have created their own walkway outside their premises, of different widths. Added to this, there were two wheelers parked on the footpath, which meant that I had to hop down to the main road in the middle of the traffic and then hop back to a new footpath of a different width and height. Finally, the foul smell during the walk just killed the fun. Men seem to urinate anywhere they feel like, as if all the walls and footpaths in Chennai are nothing but urinals. Obviously, the experience was far from pleasant.

But as I turned from Nandanam to Kotturpuram, I was pleasantly surprised. The area was well-lit, had a really nice park to my left, and the bridge built over Adyar river was constructed keeping in mind the pedestrians. However, expecting cycle lanes is a bit too idealistic here. I decided to walk via the Kotturpuram market which was very crowded, with traffic running in all directions. No sign of any footpath/signal on the way. And worse, street hawkers had encroached upon both the pedestrian space and even blocked half of the road. What I found even more astonishing is a temple right in the middle of the road! So devotees stand outside the temple during ‘archanai’, fully immersed, in the midst of the traffic and noise! Yet, walking from Kotturpuram to Gandhinagar was a fairly nice experience, and since the beach is closer to Adyar, the cool breeze calmed me down. It was 9pm when I reached home, thanks to the coffee break that I had taken at Nandanam CCD. Luckily, I used the washroom in CCD because all along my walk back home I could spot only one public convenience at Kotturpuram signal and that also was stinking from a distance of 200m. Only men who feel free to urinate anywhere in the city seemed to be using the public toilet. I realized I should have just walked past Kotturpuram and hit the IIT flyover to reach Gandhinagar rather than the stupid shortcut through the market. Even though the walk would have been longer, the roads are well lit and pedestrian friendly, at least till you hit the crossing at IIT flyover, a place where accidents occur on a daily basis.

When I got back home, I hurriedly went in for a shower because my eyes were burning and my feet felt extremely dirty. I made up my mind to wear walking shoes and fully covered clothes for my future walkathons.

Contributed by – Somya Sethuraman, a Researcher for the Transparent Chennai team of the Centre for Development Finance, IFMR