Chennai-Traffic Easy seminar

Today I attended a seminar titled Traffic Easy organised by the madras chapters of Soroptimist International. Though I had to move out before the finish I sat through lectures by Dr. Prithika Chary, Senior Consultant Neurologist, Ms. Shobha Iyer, Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group and Dr.Murthy V.A. Bondada of IIT, Chennai. It was an informative and eye-opening session to say the least.

Dr. Prithika Chary talked about the health hazards of traffic congestion and how it is projected to be the no.2 killer in the year 2020 and stressed on walking for a short distance instead of what we do now!

Ms. Shobha Iyer talked of the neglected lot on road, ie., pedestrians and cyclists and hoped for consultation with people of the locality by the authorities before implementing any solution.

But in my opinion Dr. Murthy's lecture had pragmatic solutions and the way to implement them. Here now are some of the points from his lecture.

1. We don't use the same mantras for all functions. We have a different one for marriage, child birth, pooja, etc. The same way for a short distance we can walk, for one or two people to go with little luggage we can use bike or auto and for long distance family trip we can use cars.

2. While long term solutions are implemented the short term solutions also should be taken care of.

3. In Chennai context he gave the following statistics.

28% of the people walk

13% of the people use cycle

29% of the people use bus

18% of the people use bikes/scooters

4% of the people use cars

3% of the people use autos

rest use lorries, trucks, etc.

Those who walk and use cycle are not considered as road space hogger s and also don't contribute to pollution.

Though 29% use buses it is <1% when trips by buses are considered.

18% of the bikes/scooters occupy 75% of the road trips.

4% of the cars occupy 18% of the road trips.

Autos used by 3% of the people make 2% of the road trips.

But most of the road related schemes seem to be having 22% of the vehicle population, ie., bikes/scooters and cars neglecting totally the interests of pedestrians and cyclists.

If only the pedestrians are given proper side walks and cyclists a separate lane most of the congestion and accident related deaths will come down. Actually 40% of the accidents are due to traffic congestion and only 25% due to rule violations, as informed by Dr. Prithika Chary earlier.

I didn't take notes. Otherwise I could have given a much detailed report.