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}

Using Twitter for user generated traffic updates

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Now that I've copy-pasted that from the Twitter website, let me explain how Twitter could be used by users to generate traffic updates. Let's say you're driving through Mehdipatnam and you see a traffic jam because of an accident or because of some road works in progress. You decide to warn other drivers about this by sending an sms to 556511. People who "follow" you will receive your sms via Twitter and they can then choose to leave early or take another route.
Before GPS enabled maps with real time traffic data becomes more popular, I guess this could be an effective way of creating user generated "traffic maps".

If you like this idea, then create an account at Twitter.com and register your mobile device. Send me an email to let me know you have done this. My email id is available on my blogger profile. I will also send out an email to the Google group and find out if people are interested in trying out this idea.

Submitted an idea for a reality show to CNN IBN

I submitted an idea to CNN-IBN about a reality show on traffic in Indian cities. Here is what I submitted:

Idea:
Why don't we have a reality show to find out which Indian city has the best traffic? This will give a chance to involve the people in the respective cities, a grassroots movement of sorts.

You can have user votes, a panel of judges, but most importantly, residents of the cities will take pride in making their city's traffic better. The end result will be that all the participating cities will have better traffic at the end of the show and everyone wins.
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Let's see if they like the idea, because I think there will be a lot of positives coming out of such a reality show.