Part 3 — Traffic
Background (Context):
Rewinding the story to 1997–98 when I came to Bangalore, I saw it was way too peaceful. You could see traffic but it was still pleasant to drive across the city with not much of a plan except for probably few areas like KR Market, Commercial street, MG road etc. You could decide to go for a movie on Saturday morning and not worry about parking.
As already mentioned, at the most middle class families used to have 1 car and 1 bike unless you were considered rich or belonged to an elite class. But one thing I found it weird here in Bangalore during that time frame was a trend. Trend being that parents need to get their kids either a bike or a Scooty or a Sunny after 10th because the kid got 80% + or 85% + in his/her 10th boards and they use this to go to tuitions from one place to another for the next few years and to college after that.
This trend although initially didn’t seem like too concerning back in 1999–2000, but its effect I could easily see within the next 6–7 years when suddenly you started seeing lot of 2 wheelers on the roads. The once quite DVG road in Basavanagudi started to look like a 2 wheeler parking spot and road becoming bit narrow.
Definitely, this is where it would boil down to having coordination between various government agencies and various departments working in tandem to ensure the city was poised for growth. Ideally there should have been a plan to see if we could improve the city infrastructure to keep pace with number of vehicles being registered per day across the various RTOs. This is where I completely blame the planning experts, the corrupt bureaucrats and lack of political will which didn’t have the foresight to see how the city would grow. Instead of doing jugaad fixes by creating one-ways, small stretch of flyovers, putting no parking zones and towing away vehicles for a meagre 50 -100 bucks or having the first metro train to run from Baiyappanahalli to MG road — if they had created a holistic 100 year future proof plan and worked on rapid execution of the metro or whatever they envisaged and completed at least 60–70% of the infrastructure, it would not have been that bad.
Definitely if you don’t provide last mile connectivity, citizens will look for alternatives but in retrospect I guess we did a poor choice of going ahead and buying 3–4 vehicles per house. But what’s done can’t be undone.
Now coming to “we” the people also contributing to traffic. All of us today are responsible for the mess we are in. We could still help ourselves a bit but we don’t do it. So many folks stay near to the office within 3–4 kms radius but still get a car or bike. Heard so many people talk “ Arre kaun itni door chalega bhai? bike se aa jata hoon” (Yaaro ashtu doora nadithaare? Bike nalli barthini). These same people during chai break will tell there was serious traffic jam near my PG. Took almost 20 min to cross 1 km.
Add to that we call ourselves more educated, more modern in terms of technology than what we were 2 decades back but I think the basic sense of traffic rules have diminished now more than ever.
Earlier it was like the unpadh(uneducated), jaahil ganvaar (the village folks) or some chapris(hooligans) driving on the wrong side of the road or driving on the footpath. But now every one including “YOU” — could be youngsters, family men, ladies, corporate professionals, lawyers, doctors, ladies/grandpas with kids, the swiggy/zomato wala, the zepto/blinkit wala have utter disregard to the traffic rules. Talking on the phone, seeing the phone, not giving indicator, jumping the signal, haphazard parking, overtaking from the wrong side, not giving way to the opposite side is making the travel even more horrible. What once was a pleasant drive is now a nightmare. To top it all, the Bangalore Traffic Police fines are not that stringent.
You try to rectify or put sense into people and we get road rage as a result which includes stabbing, abusing, vandalizing your vehicle. Again this behavior is seen across sections irrespective of you are a Bangalorean/Non-Bangalorean, Kannadiga or non-Kannadiga.
Overall, we need to collectively be mindful and see how to make Bengaluru a more sustainable city . I urge you to carpool, use public transport, and help reduce traffic chaos by following traffic rules — one smart choice at a time. Be a good Bangalorean!!
