Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Strategy to counter the growing traffic problems in Hyderabad :In progress

{This is a work in progress. I thought of sharing it here to get your ideas, feedback and hopefully your involvement.}

What would be the best strategy to counter the growing traffic problems in Hyderabad? First, let's identify the various entities that contribute to this problem.

Autos
Cabs
APSRTC buses
Pedestrians
Citizens who use 4 wheelers and/or 2 wheelers to commute
Traffic Police
GHMC/APIIC depending on the area
Government/Political parties


Assuming that we have identified all the parameters, now let's see what would be the best way to deal with them.
First, create SMART goals such as 'Increase compliance with traffic rules' and 'Decongest major traffic junctions'. Lets call them HYDGOALS. These could be further broken down into sub goals that could be mapped to the entities identified above.
Create teams that would concentrate on tackling these areas, headed by a Project Manager. The team would create their own sub goals and then align those with the HYDGOALS. The Autos team would create goals such as ‘Get buy in from major Auto Unions to start following rules'. The APSRTC team would create goals such as 'Ensure buses stop within identified bus bays' and 'Ensure that the average time on routes is increased to reduce pressure on the drivers'.

All these subgoals would eventually roll up to fulfill a HYDGOAL, but by breaking them down, we make it easier to tackle and track them.

{will keep adding more stuff here}

5 comments:

Bharani Surineni said...

Ths a good action, please let me know if I can be of some help.

I guess heards of cattle moving on the road in peak timings on the road can also be considered(I think).

I have my own experiences in Hyd Traffic, if you find time do dig them at:
http://straightfrommyeyes.blogspot.com/search/label/Hyderabad

Unknown said...

I have an idea for Traffic police.
Jams often occur at places that are less manned by police. Assuming the police has a good network and dispatch personnel to the Jam site, they will still take time to reach and the traffic will only delay them. The "Paramedic" action has to be taken by people on the spot.
We need a group of volunteers who are given a basic training and kit with useful tools. With sufficient number of such volunteers we can hope that some would be always close to any unexpected Jam site and provide some relief or prevent the situation from getting worse till help arrives from the police.

Unknown said...

Coming from Mumbai, I was surprised to see that even big junctions in Hyderabad don't have traffic signals. For example, look at the Hi-Tec city junction in front of TCS Deccan Park building (red brick building), or the junction in front of Jayabheri Silicon County, in White Fields. Accidents are just waiting to happen at these junctions. If traffic signals are installed there, traffic will be much more regulated.

Unknown said...

This seems to be a very well-laid out approach. Splitting up into teams with their own individual goals wil definitely work. If we go about implementing it stretch by stretch as you had mentioned, then I am positive it will work out.

I would suggest having a team to indicate the importance of lane traffic. By just attempting to obey some rules say even for a stretch of 2-5 km, I think poeple could understand the benefit of this system. Say if we take a major arterial road in HITEC city, we could probably try to first streamline the flow by requesting bus drivers to drive only in the left most lane of say a 2 by 2 lane road. This has a two advantages
1. It would free up the other lane for 2,3 & 4 wheelers to go
2. It would be easier for buses to stop at the bus bays.

I know this could be very audacious and daunting task but I am sure we could see some positive results if we approach it step by step.

I would be glad to help out and contribute in this challenging effort.

Rama Krishna said...

Great Initiative.

My ideas:

1. Create survey or with existing data find or with the help of companies find from where people are coming to offices.

And based on this data, create office timings.

For example, Some offices in that area start at 7 AM. Other at 8 AM
and others at 9 AM.

There is no cost for this idea.

2. Create underpasses and overpasses in most of the areas.
Pedestrian traffic is one of the main issue.

To mitigate the cost for construction and maintenance of it.
I propose construction of commercial shops in the underpass. We will give tender to big companies like L&T etc to construct them and maintain them and they can take 50% or 80% of rental income from these shops.

The best part is these shops will get prime real estate space.