PUNE: Mumbai has a population of about 200 lakhs who drive around 17 lakh vehicles. In comparison, Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad has a population of about 40 lakh people who drive an equal number of vehicles.
This is simply because the public transportation system in Mumbai is good enough to take care of the commuting needs of its vast population. In stark contrast, people in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad are forced to resort to private transportation to commute.
The problem is worsened by the fact that Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad (including the three Cantonments of Pune, Khadki and Dehu Road) have a total length of barely 1250 kms of motorable roads.
This is the primary reason for congestion on our roads - a disproportionately high vehicle population which leads to peak-hour traffic density which is higher than any other city in India.
The problem is getting aggravated by the day. Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad has a relatively higher standard of living in comparison with other cities. Which means, more people here can afford to buy private transportation.
During the last financial year, 2007-08, a whopping 1.75-lakh new vehicles were added to this twin-township. About 40,000 were four-wheelers and 1,36,000 were two-wheelers. Of these, 28,000 four-wheelers and 87,000 two-wheelers were registered in Pune alone.
It estimated that by March 2010, there will be 20 lakh vehicles running on our roads. The only way to control this burgeoning growth, which will massively overburden our roads, is to provide reliable and efficient public transportation.
It is impossible to expect a solution from the two municipal corporations, given their track record of consistently mismanaging the city bus service.
In any case, pragmatic estimates by experts suggest it would require at least 1,000 more city buses to bring the bus service to a level where people would stop using private transport and start relying on bus services.
The other solution is an underground metro with a wide network, which would take at least a decade to build, provided we find the funds.
While short-sighted bureaucrats have suggested punitive ‘congestion taxes’ (in addition to road taxes) to deter and discourage people from using their vehicles, the only way out, right now, is to create more roads. And the only way that is possible is by building fly-overs which take away some of the traffic from the existing roads.
It is heartening to see that the civic bodies have embarked on a long term plan to create more fly-overs in the city (see list on Cityscape Page 2). However, it is imperative that not only are the fly-overs meticulously planned, but traffic over the fly-overs is equally meticulously guided, so that the fly-overs do not end up creating more problems than they resolve.
A case in point is the latest series of flyovers linking the Shimla Office square to the approach roads to Pashan, Baner and Aundh. While traffic flows rapidly and smoothly in the direction of the three suburbs, traffic from the opposite direction disgorges into a bottle-neck on the Shimla Office square. Before the fly-over existed, one could see a pile up of traffic extend upto the LIC building. Now traffic jams build up upto the Rahul Cinema.
Of course, the real culprit for this bottleneck is the City Traffic Police department, which has been completely incompetent in timing the city’s traffic signals to enable quick flow of traffic. The traffic signal at the Shimla Office square halts traffic for 120 seconds - causing a massive pile up of vehicles speeding down the fly-over - totally negating the purpose of having a flyover.
While fly-overs cannot become the sole solution to ease traffic congestion, a network of fly-overs coupled with an efficient public transport system can dramatically reduce the vehicle density on our roads. It will also do away with the need to widen existing roads at the cost of destroying trees and robbing the pedestrian of space to walk.