[sustran] FW: New Highways in India
Paul Barter
paulbarter at nus.edu.sg
Wed Dec 7 17:27:43 JST 2005
This from another list seems like it would be of interest here.
Paul
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Larry Gould
> Sent: Wednesday, 7 December 2005 8:58 AM
> Subject: New Highways in India
>
> The following excerpt from the NY Times on 12/4, an article
> on the construction of limited access highways in India,
> contains an articulate explanation (by Amy Waldman) of the
> different character of types of highways.
>
> In the village of Kaushambi, in Uttar Pradesh, Anil Kumar, a
> 34-year-old shopkeeper, watched truck traffic speed by on the
> widened highway and explained how the artery's revamping had
> reconfigured long-held local geography.
>
> Because vehicles rarely traveled at more than 25 miles an
> hour, village life had always happened on both sides of the
> road. The two-lane highway inhabited space, but did not
> define it. The railway station and village hand pump were on
> one side, the school and fields on the other. Women roamed
> across the land, indifferent to whether soil or asphalt was
> beneath their feet, gathering wood, water, the harvest.
>
> In India roads have been public spaces, home to the logical
> chaos that governs so much of life. They have been commas,
> not periods, pauses, not breaks.
>
> The redone highway has challenged that, trying to impose
> borders and linearity, sometimes controlling pedestrian (and
> bovine) access to ensure drivers' speed. In Kaushambi, the
> highway planners put concrete walls on both sides to ensure
> that neither crossing pedestrians nor trucks stopping to shop
> would slow traffic. There were cuts every 380 yards or so,
> requiring detours for crossing. Cars and trucks sped along at
> 70 or 80 miles an hour.
>
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