[sustran] India's Cities Risk Repeating America's Congestion Mistakes

[Vinay Baindur]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/09/battle-bangalores-soul-comes-down-its-streets/3186/


India's Cities Risk Repeating America's Congestion Mistakes
Proposed expansions of dozens of major arteries in Bangalore are
threatening the Indian city's way of life.


   - MARK BERGEN <http://www.theatlanticcities.com/authors/mark-bergen/>
   - SEP 07, 2012
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[image: India's Cities Risk Repeating America's Congestion Mistakes]Reuters

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BANGALORE, India – Fifty feet below Sankey Road, a two-lane street that
hugs a small lake in northern Bangalore, lays a thin residential avenue. A
line of trees hovers over it, so the hum of traffic above is barely
noticeable. One night last year, another sound definitely was.

"The house started shaking and that’s when we realized," recalls an elderly
resident who spoke with me through a translator. She walks me to the spot
where city workers arrived unannounced to uproot the trees that shield her
home from traffic noise. Then she shows me where they returned to mark,
with red X’s, where the new Sankey Road would extend.


*Photos by Mark Bergen*

Behind her home is a trio of small temples, where locals come throughout
the day to pray. Just down the road is another, larger temple. And beside
that, yet another. When the new lanes arrive, each of these structures will
suddenly sit right next to Sankey Road, or be uprooted as well.

These sacred streets are colliding with something also sacrosanct in
Bangalore: a shorter commute.

This neighborhood, Malleshwaram, is known for its concentration of Hindu
temples. Throughout India, it’s not unusual for religious sites to sit
right next to homes and stores, intertwined with secular life. But now
these sacred streets are colliding with something also sacrosanct in
Bangalore: a shorter commute.

Roughly 4 million vehicles live in this city. Often, it feels as if they
are all on the road at once. One recent
study<http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-12/bangalore/32647505_1_congestion-bangalore-iisc>,
from the Indian Institute of Science, claims that congestion costs the city
around $3 million every day. For each resident, an hour in traffic chips
away nearly a tenth of the average Bangalorean’s daily wage.

In response, the city government has coalesced around a single tactic: to
ease traffic on the roads, they will add more road. Across the city, as in
dozens of other Indian metropolises, official plans are underway to dig
into streets like Sankey Road and widen them.

"The question really is whether it actually decongests the city," says Leo
Saldanha, director of the Environmental Support Group, an advocacy
organization here that has been combating the measures. "It doesn’t."

With incomes ticking up, India’s cities are now experiencing the automobile
revolution the U.S. went through 60 years ago. And they may be repeating
the same transit fallacies, explains Dr. Ashish Verma, the author of the
IISc study and head of the Transportation Research Group of India. His work
supports findings
elsewhere<http://www.ejtir.tbm.tudelft.nl/issues/2012_03/abstracts/2012_03_02.asp>
that
adding lanes does little to reduce traffic.

Some streets scheduled for widening, Verma says, were expanded just five
years before. "That means there’s something wrong with the planning," he
tells me.

•       •       •       •       •

Despite the evidence, the city is sticking to its strategy. Last December,
a regional courtapproved the
expansion<http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/BAN-sankey-road-widening-gets-hc-nod-2605951.html>
of
Sankey Road, one of more than 200 planned citywide. In response, several
groups of property owners have formed in opposition to widening projects.
It is, in a way, India’s version of NIMBY—a cabal of relatively wealthy
homeowners preventing projects in their area.

Saldanha, who is working to organize the disparate groups, tries to push
back against this instinct. When homeowners alone stand against the
projects, he asks, "what happens to the street vendors?"


*Commuters are seen on a busy commercial street in Bangalore. Photo by
Reuters*

The innumerable hawkers that pepper Bangalore’s streets are often the first
to be displaced. They’re also an integral part of the street life advocates
are trying to preserve. "With the possible exception of the railroad,
streets capture more about India than any other setting," anthropologist
Arjun Appadurai wrote in "Street Culture," his 1987 essay for* The India
Magazine*. "On its streets, India eats, works, sleeps, moves, celebrates
and worships."

For those opposed to widening, the concern is whittling street life down to
a single concept: India drives.

•       •       •       •       •

At stake for some is the very definition of the city. Another stretch on
the widening docket is Avenue Road, a historic commercial boulevard cutting
through the city’s center. "You destroy Avenue Road," Saldanha says, "you
destroy the soul of Bangalore."

Talk to most long-time residents here, and they’ll fondly reminisce about a
time when the streets in Bangalore, still known as the "Garden City," were
quieter and tree-lined. The issue has even become political. At a June
press conference, where city officials announced their road expansion
plans, opposition leaders ticked
off<http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_congress-rakes-up-road-widening-issue-in-bangalore_1698850>
the
number of trees lost to recent city projects.

Last summer, when the city began removals along Sankey Road, several people
were arrested in protest. The removal auction was done covertly and
illegally, claims Meenakshi Bharath, a gynecologist in the neighborhood who
filed a lawsuit against the expansion.

On its streets, India eats, works, sleeps, moves, celebrates and worships.

The resistance seems to be working. Of the 216 roads pegged for widening in
Bangalore, only 20 construction spots have broken ground, according to city
officials. In part, the public opposition is responsible. Mainly, though,
the city is just too broke.

Patil, who like some Indians goes by one name, lives and works on the
street next to Sankey Road. He shows me the portion set for removal in the
building that is his home and his office, where he works for Communist
Party of India. He believes the heavy traffic requires a fix. "They should
do it in a proper way," he says of the widening, "with proper compensation."

For the time being, Sankey Road construction is stalled, wrapped up less by
strong opposition than empty coffers. Residents opposed to the projects are
getting an edge from the same forces keeping Bangalore from investing in
other infrastructure needs.

The city cannot afford to compensate people like Patil for his property.
Nor can it pay for the costly overhauls of widening, explains Bharath, the
neighborhood activist. “If they did have the funding, they would go through
with it,” she says.
 Keywords: Bangalore <http://www.theatlanticcities.com/topics/bangalore/>,
Trarfic <http://www.theatlanticcities.com/topics/trarfic/>,
congestion<http://www.theatlanticcities.com/topics/congestion/>
, Traffic Engineering<http://www.theatlanticcities.com/topics/traffic-engineering/>