Transport lines lead development rather than follow it. Efficient movement of goods and services is a pre-requisite for rolling the wheels of engines of development. Our cities had at the time of independence around 3 lakh vehicles. On last count, this has increased to 100-fold with over 30 million registered motor vehicles.In the national context, this has crossed 50 million. The high degree of economic loss due to the inadequacy of the road carriage ways and also the bad conditions of the roads at the national level is estimated to be of the order of Rs 300 billion per annum, leave alone the fatal accidents which take place in India, which is 25 times more than in US. How do we remedy the situation?We need major initiatives for expanding the city road network. This can only be done by creating additionality of space through improved traffic management through flyovers, elevated multi-layer road space, subways, bye-passes etc. Some initiatives show light at the end of the tunnel.The 4 KM stretch of Jaisinghpur Bye-Pass in Kolkapur done in 1992-93 through private initiative, could not succeed, as the public was not taken into confidence to pay the user charges.Whereas the Thane-Bhiwandi Bye-Pass done under BOT in 1997 for the 23 KM stretch is proving to be success. With daily collections of road toll picking up to Rs 2 lakh per day, the expenditure incurred on the toll based system would be made good by the BOT operator in less than 4 years as against a concession period of 7 years.When Shri Bhaiyalal Shukla, a 72 year old giant in road and bridge sector in Madhya Pradesh over the last 50 years, has picked up the road bridge on River Chambal near Ghata Billod, Dhar district, not only could he complete the bridge on a self-financing basis in a record time but also received bonus for early completion and has also been able to bring in increased revenues through road toll collection not only to cover capital and maintenance costs but also sufficient returns for investment.Now the longest ever city flyover between Sirsi Circle and Town Hall in Bangalore City which is a 3.6 Kms stretch, creating additional faster road carriage ways for the ever increasing traffic congestion on that road in Bangalore is taken care of through dedicated financial flow to service the capital cost and maintenance cost. It provides the lead for other cities with similar traffic conditions and lack of road facilities.The bye-passes help the cities in two ways for utilising the deficient road carriage ways only by the exclusive city vehicular movement and also leave out the unintended long route vehicles and enable the bye-passable traffic with different desire lines of destination to move unhindered.Further, a shift is needed towards the public modes of transportation by reducing the personalised modes of travel. The buses and chartered buses along with the other speedier hauls would substantially help in reducing the personalised motor vehicle density on roads.The third and more important contribution for decongestion is by providing additional road carriage ways through subways, flyovers, byepasses, new alignment of layers of roads etc.To facilitate this, initiatives adopted in Hongkong for similar problems could be well considered. The author is the CMD of Housing and Urban Development Corporation and the views are personal.
