[sustran] !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Flyover epidemic continues ... hell with "The National Urban Transport Policy" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Sujit Patwardhan]

11 June 2012


*Will IIMA flyover end traffic woes? *
http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?pgNo=3&edcode=1310005&eddate=2012-6-11


*Will it end traffic woes? Of course not but who cares?*

Blatantly violating the recommendations of our "National Urban Transport
Policy (NUTP)" that asks cities to focus on people not vehicles, all our
cities in a hurry to grow into urban giants of tomorrow are trying to outdo
each other in building more and more flyovers.

These useless monoliths of the inglorious phase of urban planning that is
also called "car-dominated" phase of city planning did nothing to solve the
problem of road congestion but ironically made it worse by attracting even
more private vehicles on these corridors.

But like coining new popular slogans we love to make new policies that no
one in the Govt bothers to enforce. NUTP supports Public Transport,
Non-motorised Transport (NMT) and warns against profligate use of personal
auto vehicles that hog road space, guzzle fuel (that's getting dearer and
scarcer) and belch deadly auto effluents that are deadly for our health.
But our cities don't seem to care a fig and continue building expensive
infrastructure for the auto vehicle while starving public transport buses
from even meagre financial help needed for survival. Our city leaders feel
cycle tracks are a waste of public money and ask "who uses the cycle these
days?"

Obviously something is seriously wrong with our city governance and its not
going to be put right by those who have slept all these years. People need
to wake up and demand a change.

Do read this article:- ,

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?pgNo=3&edcode=1310005&eddate=2012-6-11

the text version of this appears below:-

--
Sujit






*Will IIMA flyover end traffic woes?*

*
*

Niyati Rana & Ashwini Ramesh


Bahadur Soratiya  – Sells Maskabun

I have been doing business here for the last 14 years. I am disappointed
with the proposal. It will be difficult for us to find a new place if the
civic body moves us from here once the work begins. Shifting my business to
the market will be costly as I will have to pay more rent than what we
earn. The flyover will harm our business.


 We have not been notified about shifting to another place. And when we do,
the govt won’t help us by providing us a facility at some other place to
continue out trade. This will affect our business which gives me
Rs2000-2500 a day. I suggest that a food court be built under the proposed
flyover. It will help the vendors and the rent would add to the
government’s earnings.”

Experts say traffic will shift to the already congested lane towards
Vastrapur lake

Ahmedabad already has over a dozen flyovers and it plans to build more when
countries like the United States and the United Kingdom have come to the
realisation that flyovers cannot decongest traffic on roads.

The latest flyover to be sanctioned by the city authorities would come up
over the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIMA) crossroads. It has
been argued that the flyover would solve the problem of chronic traffic
congestion that plagues this point but the proposal has drawn criticism
from city planners and architects in Ahmedabad.

Experts say flyovers do not provide a solution to the problem of traffic
congestion; they just shift the congestion to a different place. In this
case too, traffic congestion would be shifted to a different area once the
IIMA flyover is ready, the experts say.

Academicians, architects and city planners are one in saying that vehicular
traffic using the flyover would get off near the new IIMA campus and drive
to the lane going to the Vastrapur lake. This narrow lane is already
congested with all kinds of traffic, right from Alpha One Mall.

A member of faculty at Centre for Environment Planning and Technology
(CEPT) University said that the IIMA flyover would merely shift the traffic
congestion to a different point.

“It seems that the flyover was sanctioned without conducting a study to
understand the flow of traffic. The authorities here seem to like launching
big projects without understanding what is really needed,” he said.

Director (transport) at the Institute for Transportation and Development
Policy (ITDP), Anuj Malhotra, also believes that flyovers don’t really
provide a solution to the problem of traffic congestion.

"At the current rate of increase in the number of private vehicles, the
city’s roads get saturated by the time a flyover is ready. The city of
Ahmedabad adds 600 vehicles to its roads daily," he said.

Ahmedabad-based architect Yatin Pandya holds similar views. He said that
the IIMA flyover would let the traffic flow straight in one direction.

“When we build a flyover, the idea is to remove the conflict between
vehicles crossing each other at the crossroads. Ideally, to remove
congestion, flyovers should also have branches to direct the flow of
vehicles to the right or left,” he said. He further said that building a
split flyover would not serve the purpose. Some aspects such as direction
of the flyover, nature of the traffic and alignment of the flyover should
be kept in mind while building flyovers, he added. Malhotra also said that
channelising traffic over a junction with a flyover results in increasing
the speed of vehicles.

“This increases the chances of fatalities during accidents. Also,
channelizing never helps because the vehicles bypassing this junction will
collect at the next. Hence, no matter how many flyovers we build, they will
never be sufficient to end the traffic congestion,” he said.

A study conducted by ITDP with EMBARQ (a centre for sustainable transport
solutions), states that most advanced cities of the world have recognized
that flyovers are of little help in decongesting traffic. Instead, they are
moving towards a policy of discouraging the use of private vehicles. This
is being done by re-allocating finances for investment in better traffic
management systems and improving and maintaining high quality public
transport systems.


*DNA Ahmedabad, dated 11June 2012*

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[image: Inline image 1]

*Parisar*

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Sujit Patwardhan
patwardhan.sujit at gmail.com
sujit at parisar.org <sujitjp at gmail.com>
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