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Editor’s Page
DOING AWAY WITH SPEED BREAKERS
It is a perennial conundrum that needs to be urgently solved
- India’s transport dilemma. With the country’s
minders outlining ambitious plans to take India into a higher
growth orbit, the urban transportation sector – with
proposed metros, monorails, freight corridors, BRTS networks
- will need all the correction, read reform it can possibly
get. Indeed India is a far cry from the old bullock cart economy,
but beasts of burden still continue to clog India’s
transport arteries along with the unending trail of vehicles
belching polluting fumes. Though the Delhi Metro has come
as an outstanding example of discipline in the midst of urban
chaos – as saw from the Capital’s previous experience
of the DTC bus – Urbs Prima Indis, Mumbai, the largest
contributor ot the national exchequer, continues to suffer
from benign neglect – the likes of which is evident
from the famous everyday visuals of strap hanging commuters
in trains, best described as travelling gymnasiums. In the
recent past some relief has come to the harried people taking
the tracks to work in the form of additional lines to the
extended suburbs, new and additional rakes – sadly some
with new handles for the clingers that don’t quite make
the mark and cause more discomfort – and a new airconditioned
city bus fleet. But it is the much needed new projects like
the Metro which have not quite taken off the way they should
have for a host of reasons, including the global financial
meltdown. Bidders for various projects have been backing off
owing to the cost leading to delays in implementation. In
Hyderabad the Metro project has become a casualty of sorts
with the project being taken away from the Satyam group company
Maytas Infra.
The Delhi BRTS has come in flak from critics as an ill planned
exercise. The mainstream railways have done well with new
routes and upgradation of passenger amenities, new rolling
stock and announcement of the setting up of production units
but clearly more needs to be done. It is the roads, which
carry almost 90 percent of the country’s passenger traffic
and 65 percent of its freight where much of the action is
happening, but even here one comes across problems such as
land acquisition, threat from the mafia, and funding issues.
Significantly most highways in India are narrow and congested
with poor surface quality, and 40 percent of India’s
villages do not have access to all-weather roads. The expressways,
national and state highways now being held out as a symbol
of a changing India constitute merely 7 per cent of this network,
indicating the scarcity of ‘productive’ roads
in the country. The economic losses from congestion and poor
roads are estimated at Rs 120 to 300 billion a year. That
is not to say that no progress has been made. Far from it.
It is being reported that most of the work on the GQ has been
completed thus far and the remainder of the work on the North-South
and East-West corridors will be completed in the coming months.
A substantial impact upon the economy is already visible but
clearly more push is required. As experts will tell us a national
transportation strategy exists but remains hostage to various
tugs and pulls. Transportation projects find resistance from
private sector bidders because of issues such as viability
gap funding and bureaucratic logjam. It is high time the powers
that be, the funding agencies, and the private players participating
in the developments got together to remove the speed breakers.
Only then India can get on a fast track.
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