[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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