Getting a Grip on Traffic Congestion in Indian Cities
At the time of Independence, the British largely lived in the civil lines, cantonments, and railway colonies. Towards other areas, the British maintained a hands-off attitude and these grew without significant urban planning interventions.
After Independence, a need was felt to plan for these unplanned Indian areas as well as areas around cities where future growth was expected to occur. The tool chosen for this purpose was the Master Plan. Simply, the master plans do long-term forecasts of city requirements and then earmark areas for residential, commercial, and industrial uses. In other words, the use of land in different parts of the city is locked for nearly 15-20 years.
The National Commission of Urbanization studied master planning in 1988. The Commission found that once-formulated master plans were difficult to change and the preparation of new master plans was a long-drawn process. Most importantly, the master plans were disconnected from economic planning.
For example, master plans only earmarked areas for industrial development, without going into details about the number of workers required in different types of industries (e.g. textile vs. engineering) and the need to house them nearby in dormitories or houses. They also failed to forecast the migration of workers from rural to urban areas looking for employment and provide housing and infrastructure for them. In one way this contributed to slum development.
Once India’s economy started to open up during the 1990s, urban areas became drivers of rapid economic growth. Master plans were found to be inadequate and State Governments started to change land uses based on requirements of investments coming into cities. The rendering open of master plans was done in the following ways -
State Governments formally allowed flexibility in land use and building construction, such as allowing commercial activities in residential areas, permitting construction of taller buildings, compensating for surrendering land for road widening by allowing more floors/built-up area, etc.
State Governments informally allowed individual plot/building owners to build beyond what building codes permitted, leading to widespread violations that State Governments committed to 'regularize’ at regular intervals
This shift in focus from forecasting and managing growth as per master plans to investments made building activity gravitate toward certain area(s) in cities and neglect others since not all area(s) in a city are equally attractive for investment. This has led to mixed-up development in cities - areas with varying land uses and building types arranged in a seemingly haphazard manner.
The seemingly disordered traffic patterns observed in Indian cities are a consequence of this mixed-up development or disjointed distribution of activities.
The only way to connect these disjointed activities in cities is to go above the ground or below it. Thus, the large-scale construction of overhead/underground metro rails.
Another immediate solution is to continually alleviate congestion whenever and wherever it occurs by widening roads, building flyovers/underpasses/bypasses, etc. The flip side of this step-by-step approach is that the creation of more road space leads people to increase their use of cars or make certain trips that they were avoiding earlier or switch from public transport to private/shared transport. This soon reinstates congestion.
Traffic congestion is an outcome of the way land use patterns have been demarcated and changed in Indian cities. There are no definitive textbook solutions to deal with this type of traffic jams. Managing traffic arising due to the disconnected distribution of land uses and building types requires flexibility, caution, and the ability to navigate with incomplete knowledge. Thus, mitigating traffic congestion in Indian cities is more of an art than a science.
