G.PATTANAIK
President LMA
Dated January 17, 2009
Subject: Presentation on Managing Lucknow Traffic-Some Options
Dear
In its monthly lecture meeting held on December 16, 2009, LMA had invited Dr. Geetam Tiwari, TRIPP
Associate Professor of Transport Planning, IIT Delhi to make a presentation on the above subject. In her
presentation, Professor Geetam Tiwari made a number of recommendations to make Lucknow traffic
more safe and people friendly in accordance with National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP). I enclose an
edited transcript of the presentation for your information. The presentation has a number of insights
which are very useful for cities of Uttar Pradesh and which have been adopted in many cities in the
country.
LMA feels that it is time that some steps in the direction as suggested by Professor Geetam Tiwari
should be initiated not only in Lucknow but also in some of the other metro-cities of U.P. Pending larger
policy interventions like creation of UMTA and bodies like UTTIPEC, which would also be necessary,
we suggest that a pilot project on a 5 km stretch in Lucknow may be taken up immediately to
implement already available guidelines in line with NUTP.
LMA would be too happy to support and facilitate any initiative the government may decide to
take in the matter.
Encl. as above
Yours sincerely
(G. PATTANAIK)
Sri Atul K Gupta IAS
Chief Secretary,
Uttar Pradesh
Lucknow
Cc Principal Secretary Transport/Urban Development/Housing/PWD/ Secretary to Hon. Chief Minister
(Sri Navneet Sehgal) along with a copy of enclosure
For restricted circulation only
MANAGING LUCKNOW TRAFFIC -SOME OPTIONS
A Presentation
by
Professor Geetam Tiwari
TRIPP Chair for Transport Planning, IIT Delhi
(Johns Hopkins Collaborative Centre, Lucknow: December 16, 2009)
Organized by:
Lucknow Management Association
B 978 Sector A, Mahanagar,
Lucknow 226007
Tele fax: 0522-2325508, 4078331
E mail: lmalucknow1970@yahoo.co.in
Website: www.lmalucknow.in
Dr Geetam Tiwari, a PhD (specialization in travel demand models and traffic flow studies) from the
University of Illinois, Chicago (Transport Planning and Policy) did her Master in Urban Planning and
Policy from the University of Illinois, Chicago (Transport Planning) and B Arch from Roorkee University.
Dr Tiwari has rich professional experience in the areas of Transport Planning, and Traffic Engineering in
India, USA and Bangladesh. She has been teaching at the Indian Institute of Technology (lIT), Delhi since
1990. She also taught short-term courses in Australia, Amsterdam, and South Africa, Tehran, Bangkok
and Uganda.
Dr Tiwari has extensive research experience in dealing with transportation issues of special relevance to
low income countries. These include development of systems and designs that would make
transportation efficient, safer and less polluting with a special focus on vulnerable road users and
commuters. Currently, she is TRIPP Chair Associate Professor for Transport Planning at the Indian
Institute of Technology Delhi and Alderbrastka Guest Professor for sustainable urban transport at the
Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden 2007-2009.
She has published over 60 research papers on transportation planning and safety in national and
international journals and peer reviewed seminar proceedings and has edited three books on
transportation planning and road safety. She received International Velocity Falco Lecture 2nd Prize,
Barcelona, Spain, IRTE & Prince Michael International Road Safety Award 2002 for "extraordinary
contribution toward road safety in India". She had submitted details of TRIPP in collaboration with
Professor Dinesh Mohan to Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities. TRIPP received the Stockholm
Partnerships Award for local impact, innovative thinking and a potential for replication or transferability.
In 2002, she along with Professor Dinesh Mohan received the first Center for Excellence for Future
Urban Transport grant from the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF). She is the Editor in
Chief of the International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion since January 2009.
She has been involved in planning and designing of Bus Rapid Transit System for Delhi government. She
served on the Board of The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, New York; Board of the
Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia and the Pacific and Transport Planning Committee, Indian
Roads Congress.
PROLOGUE
India holds the dubious distinction of registering the highest number of road accidents in the world.
According to the experts at the National Transportation Planning and Research Centre (NTPRC),
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, the number of road accidents in India is three times higher than that
prevailing in developed countries. The number of accidents for 1000 vehicles in India is as high as 35
while the figure ranges from 4 to 10 in developed countries.
In metro-cities the fatalities are relatively much higher than smaller towns for obvious reasons. A recent
study at IIM Lucknow points out that the seriousness of road safety problem in metro-cities of U.P. can
be gauged from the fact that fatality risk (road accident fatalities per thousand people) in these cities is
more than twice than that in the rest of metro-cities in the country (23.1:11.7) with Lucknow at 22.8 and
Agra, the worst at 38 deaths per 1,00,000 people. As per the report Accidental Deaths & Suicides in
India 2007 of National Crimes Record of Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs GOI, in Agra and Lucknow
respectively 85.0% and 79.7% of the total un-natural accidental deaths were due to road accidents.
Victims of roads accidents in the cities being mostly pedestrians and bicycle users, the National Urban
Transport Policy (NUTP) approved by the Government of India in April 2006 sought to make a more
equitable allocation of road space to people, rather than vehicles. It encouraged greater use of public
transport by offering central financial assistance for providing better transport facilities.
NUTP recommends creation of Unified Metropolitan Transport Authorities (UMTA’s) in all million plus
cities. Delhi, under DDA, has set up a Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure Planning and
Engineering Centre (UTTIPEC) with a view to (i)enhance mobility, (ii) reduce congestion (iii) promote
traffic safety by adopting standard transport planning practices, capacity building, enforcement
measures, road safety audits and good traffic engineering practices (iv) achieve better organizational coordination for improved traffic management by efficient lane capacity and work zone management,(iv)
promote utilities coordination, (v) develop traffic culture and (vi)avoid transport planning pitfalls in the
National Capital Territory of Delhi. Many other cities like Ahmadabad, Jaipur, Indore Pune, Surat, Rajkot,
and Bhopal have also have prepared schemes as per the NUTP and have started making interventions to
set up systems to improve their traffic infrastructure and management safer and more people friendly.
Lucknow Management Association, as a responsible segment of informed civil society, felt that some
similar interventions in Lucknow were overdue and to deliberate on what could be done here, invited
Professor Geetam Tiwari in its meeting on 16th December, 2009 to make a presentation on the subject.
Dr. Tiwari is an expert in the area and has been closely associated with developing transportation
solutions for many cities in developing countries around the world as also in many cities of India. She
has lived in Lucknow and is familiar with city and is eminently qualified to articulate the problems of
Lucknow and also offer some solutions. And indeed, she made in her presentation some useful
recommendations in line with NUTP.
This document contains an edited transcript of the presentation made by Professor Geetam Tiwari. It is
hoped that the concerned departments of the government and other authorities responsible for traffic
management of the city will find some useful inputs in it to develop institutions and systems to improve
traffic management of Lucknow.
Lucknow January 15, 2010
G. PATTANIK
President LMA
Introduction
There are a whole lot of challenges which we have to face when we deal with transportation issues.
Many of us, especially those who have Physics or Science background may realize that when we deal
with complex systems, one of the characteristics of complex systems is the presence of non linearity.
These are not linear systems. As a result of this it is not easy to predict their outcome.
Transportation is a complex system because it is multi-disciplinary. It has involvement of bureaucracy,
physical infrastructure, policies, institutions and people’s behavior amidst all this. Therefore very often,
when we think that something may be a solution, it doesn’t lead to a solution.
Often there is lot of discussion on why do we not have stricter punishment for violation of traffic laws.
There are lot of empirical studies which show that if we just have very strict punishment then policeman
who has to enforce the law becomes lenient because it is in his mind, that people should not be
punished merely for crossing the red light. And another interesting insight is that when children below 8
years of age are taught how to cross the road safely, very carefully cited studies show that those
children have higher possibility of getting involved in road accidents. So there are lots of issues in
transportation involving such counter-intuitive results.
Today, I was specifically asked to talk about Lucknow traffic. I have spent considerable amount of time in
Lucknow to conclude that Lucknow traffic is like any other city traffic in India of this size.
Car Ownership in India
Given that our per capita income in 2030 will be $15000 which by world standards in not a high income,
it is still middle income. Because of this our car ownership will also be low. It will be actually a very low
car ownership in 2030, as you can see. So, today when people say that we have too many cars and we
should have restriction on car ownership, it is a very difficult issue to explain because we have
congestion problem despite a very small car ownership. But our vehicle ownership will be much higher
because of two wheelers. It is also very interesting to understand that we have hig rate of motorization
especially in our small and medium size cities like Lucknow, because of two wheelers and not because of
cars. So whatever public transport we start thinking about, we will have to remind ourselves that our
competition is with two wheelers and not so much with cars.
Modal Pattern
Lucknow‘s population being a little over 3 million now, it falls between 2-5 million on the slide below.
This data was first taken in 1994, then it has been updated several times and the last study
which is available was done in 2008 by Wilbur Smith. So according to that also if we see the modal share
in this category of cities (2-5 million), we see predominance of motorized two wheelers and very small
segments of cars. The large share which is shown as public transport, does not necessarily mean
organized public transport because, as in Lucknow city, in many other cities we have para transport like
Vikrams and versions of it. And of course we have a large number of people walking and using Rikshas
and bicycles. So, in that sense Lucknow fits in very well in average Indian city which is in the size of 2-5
million. Our current policies will ensure whether this segment of two wheelers and cars will grow,
remain constant or shrink. If they grow then we obviously will experience more congestion on the road,
more pollution, more fuel consumption etc.
In 2005 we selected a few locations in Lucknow and videotaped traffic and analyzed to understand the
modal shares. Both at GPO traffic and Indira Nagar traffic, we see a predominance of non motorized
traffic.
Infrastructure & Behaviour
Walking and bicycles are about 33% in GPO and 32% in Indira Nagar and motorized two wheelers are in
both cases quite huge 45% and 43%. So, in a way, it is giving us a clue as to what can be done on a road.
If all the management strategies are helping only cars, then we are not helping majority of the traffic. So
the immediate thing if we want to address the problem is to understand as to who the road users are
and what will benefit the maximum number of road users.
This is a very interesting conceptual model. We call consultants and they often undertake very detailed
studies, collect data, analyze it and based on scientific studies and the growth projections of motorized
traffic, advise us on the kind of road widening etc needed in the city. But what is happening is that the
way we design our physical infrastructure determines our behavior. It means that today if more people
are using two wheelers and many people don’t want to walk or don’t want to bicycle, it is because we
have created a hostile infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists. We still have a large number of
people walking and bicycling in our cities because these are the people who don’t have choices. If
people have choices then they have stopped using these modes because our city structure has become
hostile for pedestrians and bicyclists. The structure determines our behavior and therefore when we go
and count what is happening on the road, the data is actually the result of the structure that we started
with. So, very often we end up counting cars because when we see the growth in the number of
vehicles, we find that the number of cars and two wheelers have been increasing every year.
So when we see large number of cars on the road, we justify the need to change the structure because
we have to cater to the demand of cars. So we start designing structures for car traffic and that induces
more car behavior. And then we say that we have problem on the roads because more cars mean more
congestion. So this is how some of the world’s cities have ended up creating a a massive infrastructure
for cars. When you see one lane is not enough for moving cars, you make an elevated road and then
another elevated road. It is an unending cycle. Even in the U.S., if you ask what the problem in the cities
is, it is congestion. Congestion is something we just cannot get rid of and especially when we talk about
car congestion.
We can design 25 lanes but there is enough latent demand for cars and all 25 lanes get filled up like we
see in the slide below
Now we have several examples within India also where we keep on making more roads, more elevated
structures and more grade separated junctions, signal free junctions because they serves only car traffic.
It may be easing car traffic in the short run but this does not solve congestion problem in the long run
because more people start using cars leading to congested roads.
Government of India Policy for Traffic Management-People Centric instead of Vehicle Centric
Therefore, I think, for the first time after many years after independence, there is some opportunity for
many of our cities to do something different. One such opportunity is the National Urban Transport
Policy which was finalized in 2006. If we look at this policy, which is on the website of Ministry of Urban
Development, the first sentence is “We have to design cities for people and not for vehicles……”. It is
giving a very clear direction that when we talk about mobility and planning of city, it cannot be for cars
and it cannot be only for vehicles. We have to ensure people’s mobility.
And once we change our basic premise “plan for people not for vehicles”, then I can go back to the
earlier diagram and show that how instead of cars if we start counting people, the whole structure
design starts changing. The NUTP comes out very strongly in favour of people. Therefore the focus is on
public transport, bicycles and pedestrians. Public transport means that we can move many more people
in a single vehicle and bicycle and pedestrians because clearly these are zero pollution vehicles. It is clear
now that in view of the climate change debate we cannot deny bicycles safe place on the road, and
these cannot be viewed only as poor man’s mode of transport.
I think many of our decision makers would know that under JNNURM, Central Government is giving
grant if the cities are coming up with plans for either for upgrading the existing public transport system
or introducing new public transport system or also making bicycle and pedestrian tracks. Earlier, cities
could say that they didn’t have money and they couldn’t do this but at least now there is this huge
attraction for many cities. I have seen that in 2007, many of the cities which had earlier made standard
road widening schemes, immediately overnight changed them to look like providing bicycle lanes and
bus lanes and submitted those plans to Govt. of India and many of the cities have also got money under
this scheme.
Choice of Mode of Transport
Two most important determinants in deciding how most people want to travel are time and cost. Travel
time is a very important factor which decides the choice of transport. Figure below shows the estimated
time for a typical trip of 3 km. If we just walk this distance it will take about 25-30 minutes. If we take a
bicycle, it will take you only 10 minutes. As for a bus rapid transit system, which simply means that
buses have exclusive lanes for them and therefore they have a speed advantage, we first have to walk
to a bus stop. We may be living 100 meters or so from the bus stop and it will take about 5 minutes to
reach the bus stop and then there is also some wait time involved depending on the bus frequency.
After reaching the destination, again our final leg of journey is on foot. So we take a little more than 20
minutes for the same journey.
If we have a metro system, the access trip to a metro is longer than a bus, because it may be an
underground or elevated system. So for the same distance, first we have the access trip, then we go up
or down and then the wait time. So we have slightly longer access trip. For any exclusive system, the
speed depends up on the frequency of stops and has nothing to do with technology. And then finally,
the last leg is on foot. So Metro takes more time than the bus system. And, of course, if we have a car or
a two wheeler, it is always the best. Unfortunately, car can get stuck in the congestion. So if the car gets
stuck in the congestion, then our only answer is a two wheeler or the bus.
In Lucknow, looking at the trip distribution, the average trip length of Lucknow would be about 6 km,
and about 15-20% trips will be less than this, only few trips will be longer than this(about 8-9 km). We
can do this exercise with other trip distributions but at 12 km, metro system starts becoming more
attractive.
Bus Rapid transport and Metro are attractive only when the trips are long. This is just to illustrate that
we can come up with various schemes but we have to look at how many people get benefitted by these
schemes in the short term and in the long term.
As the police records show, there are large number of accidents involving bicycles. We can reduce road
accidents substantially if we can make the whole city bicycle friendly. Today, of course many people are
using bicycles but many have stopped using it because they think it is dangerous. If we start making
interventions on arterial and non arterial streets making the roads such that people use it bicycle by
choice and not because they are poor and have no other choice, then we can make a huge difference
because the majority of the trips are short trips. And the same is true with pedestrians also.
Guidelines for Traffic Design
So when we look at the Lucknow roads, our immediate reaction is that there is not enough space and all
the roads are full of traffic and chaos. But I think this is standard. If we go to any medium size city in
India, it doesn’t look much different. Often PWD Engineers say that they don’t have space for pedestrian
paths and bicycle lanes because they have to keep 3.5 meter wide lane for cars. These are old IRC
guidelines which are being revised. So I have flagged three things which actually give guidelines to
engineers on how to make our environment bicycle friendly and pedestrian friendly.
UTTIPEC -UNIFIED TRAFFIC & TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE (PLG. & ENGG.) CENTRE draft guidelines
are for Delhi but if you look at NUTP, it is requesting all cities to make Unified Metropolitan Transport
Authorities so that we can have more integrated development. Indian Road Congress Guidelines 103
which especially deals with pedestrians has already been revised. In the first week of December, 2009
when Ministry of Urban Development held the Urban Mobility Conference, they also released Service
Level Benchmarks. That is also something very interesting because these benchmarks are giving clues to
cities how they could judge how good or bad their transport infrastructure and systems are. It is very
detailed guideline which is telling us to look at our pedestrian facilities, at our bicycle facilities, our bus
system, public transport system and it gives us what indicators we can develop based on the existing
data. It is kind of a report card and every year we can find out where we are going wrong. So, I think it is
worth exploring how we can start implementing these service level benchmarks.
What Cities are Doing
Many cities have started implementing these guidelines. There is a small city in Maharashtra called
Nanded. This city received JNNURM funding only for making their roads pedestrian and bicycle friendly.
Now, one has to actually go and see how different those roads look just by making these changes. We
have to have mobility and accessibility which means the road has to be universally accessible. Universal
accessibility means that we have to make roads not just for healthy walking people; we have to make
roads for children, for older people and for people on wheel chairs. If we can make our roads safe and
convenient for children, women and old people, then of course, these are friendly for everyone.
UTTIPEC guidelines give very detailed instructions. Road doesn’t mean just laying down black tar. We
have to think about all these little elements-how people will cross the road, how the non motorized
vehicles will move, what kind of utilities will be provided on the road, toilets, drinking places, where to
put street vendors, they all become integrated as a part of formal planning. So, later the engineers
cannot say that they had made a very wide road and street vendors have encroached now. We have to
plan for street vendors because it is easy to predict where they are going to come. We have to go into all
these little details
Main guiding principles are (i) Road geometric standards from buses and vulnerable road users
perspective. Vulnerable road users are pedestrians, bicycle, and people outside the vehicles. (ii) Traffic
management policies have to ensure the safe mobility of VRUs and (iii) the roadside vendors have to be
viewed as service providers. Using these guidelines, we will see some examples. The graphics in the
figure below are from Nanded Project. It is a small city, much smaller than Lucknow. It has become a
demonstration project for showing how streets can be planned for pedestrians, bicyclists and other road
users.
We have very interesting examples as how we can make the roads which are 18m, 15m and 12 m wide
pedestrians and bicycle friendly. For example, here we can see that even in the restricted right of way
we can have a segregated bicycle track and where it is paved, we call it multi-utility lane, we can have
landscaping, trees and alternately we can on one side provide car parking and on the other side we can
provide Rickshaw parking. So, we can use that space. Right now I am only giving glimpses of what has
been done. It is a full fledged project which has just been completed and all the details are available.
Some Desirable Features
When the streets are very narrow and we want to ensure safety to pedestrians, just making Zebra
crossings is not enough. Swedish researchers found that when the cities only painted Zebra crossings
those crossings had 40% more fatal pedestrian accidents compared to crossings with no painting at all.
And only when they combined painted lines with raised pedestrian crossing, 10 cm raised with slopes on
both sides, there was a 20% reduction at such places. So just painting Zebra crossings is not good
enough unless vehicles are made to slow down.
We have to innovate around what can be done, what details one can do at junctions. Again if a side road
is meeting a main road, this area has to be raised and it has to be made a raised pedestrian crossing to
ensure safety to everybody. If we carefully design the side areas, service road area, we can carve out
places for hawkers under trees, three wheeler parking or whatever para-transit system we may have
and we can have a segregated cycle track and foot path. Many of the things I am showing are not
conceptual any more. In Delhi, Ahmedabad, Nanded, and Pune have done these things. Engineers can
visit some of these cities and see how things are being done. Cycle tracks for us are actually NMV lanes.
They have to be wide enough to carry Rikshas also. The logic of segregation is that we must have
vehicles that move with same speed together. So cycles and Rikshas can be in one lane together and
cars and two wheelers can be together. And if we have to give priority to buses, then we can have a
separate lane for them.
Road actually means lot of street scaping, how you make it attractive for pedestrians. Pedestrian
attractiveness means safety from crime as well as safety from traffic. Safety from crime comes from
actually making it lively because if there are more people then there is less possibility of crime and
special lighting for pedestrian paths. These standards have been implemented both in Ahmedabad and
Delhi where segregated cycle tracks and pedestrian paths have special lighting. So at night also it is
completely safe to walk.
All Indian cities have some old areas with very narrow lanes. I think we should preserve them like
heritage cities and we have to just stop car traffic there and make it just nice walking, cycling or
sometimes Rickshaws but no motorized traffic. You suddenly find the change – no sound pollution, no
air pollution. Lucknow has several such places where this can be done by connecting it to parking lots
outside where people can conveniently park. Creating pedestrians, bicycle tracks do not require major
investments but they require lot of hard work and careful planning. I find with my experience in dealing
with many cities that it is the difficult part.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEM
I find that people are very excited about “Projects” and not about “Solutions”. So every city says, let’s
have a Metro even if it is a 5 km long corridor with a few thousand crore investment. We know that 5
km or 10 km is not going to solve city’s problems but it has lot of hype about it. So I suggest for decision
makers that we come up with a mix of these proposals. We can start changing our city guidelines that
next time we are going to improve any road, we can implement pedestrian and bicycle friendly
guidelines and design standards including signage and lighting. We should also start creating a good
public transport system because Lucknow does not have a very organized public transport system. There
are some city buses but for a city of 3 million population, I think these are not enough. If we compare
with Pune, also with 3.5 million population, it has about 1000 organized buses and that is the reason
there are no Vikrams there. So the challenge really is to start converting Vikrams to a more organized
system which can have financial competitiveness while dealing with people who are running Vikrams
and integrate them in the system otherwise they would become very unhappy and block introduction of
any formal system.
We want public transport system because we want to better utilize road space. So everybody sitting in
those 300 cars can come in these three buses. People want fast and convenient connectivity. So the bus
should be able to pick you and drop you where you want to go. That is the challenge we have to face.
And if the bus is also stuck in traffic jam, then why should I use a bus, if I have a car. Car in a traffic jam is
more comfortable. We can listen to music; it is air-conditioned so why should we bother about crowded
buses? if we want to encourage people to use public buses, we have to take them out of congestion,
otherwise people are not going to use public transport. The concept of creating Bus Rapid Transport
system is precisely this.
The other thing we have to remember is that just providing buses and making some infrastructure is not
enough. System means create road infrastructure, bring different vehicles, they have to have
Information Technology, passenger information, fleet management, and these are all available in cities
now, different institutional mechanisms and financial arrangements as we know that fare box revenue is
not going to be enough for the modern bus systems. And we have to have capacity building of all
stakeholders and social marketing.
If we are thinking of creating a good bus transport system, which we should for a city of this size, then
we should combine all these activities to offer a system to the users. If we don’t offer this as a system, it
doesn’t work and is not attractive to the users.
Following are the different versions of BRT and what do you think is common in all three- Jakarta, Delhi
and Bogota? Bus lanes are free and there are few buses and car lanes are always packed. But that’s the
logic, that’s what we want to create! If the bus lane is congested, then we have really not solved any
problem. So, unless car lanes are congested people will not come and use buses. And as I had shown
earlier, even if we make 25 lanes, they will be packed.
So if we really want to think about a solution for congestion, we have to stop worrying about cars. We
have to start focusing on how to take people out of congestion and that is what these new models are
all about. In Asian cities Taipei (Taiwan) and Kunming (China), we find the same thing. We see exclusive
lanes. We can see there is intermittent median between a bus lane and a car lane and that is what
ensures that bus lanes are used by cars.
OPEN AND CLOSED SYSTEMS
There are two systems in BRT. One is open system in which we have our normal bus routes wherever we
have space available and we give exclusive lanes where we have congestion. So the bus can move for
sometime in mixed traffic and then moves in the exclusive lane and then moves out. This is upgrading
the existing bus system.
Then the other kinds are closed systems which many Latin American cities have made. Closed system
means that we are imitating Metro. We create a completely closed corridor and buses which are
running on this route run on this route only and they don’t leave the corridor. So if we want to use this
system then we have to use some kind of feeder system like in the Metro. And in terms of operations,
the first one is a little more complex because it is moving in the mixed traffic also. Closed systems are
like Metros with exclusive infrastructure, exclusive vehicles, and simplified operations.
But if we look at it from user’s perspective, open systems are better because there they are not
dependent on the feeder modes. We have to think carefully for our own city what works best. For Delhi
we have gone in for open system, Ahmedabad has closed system but Ahmedabad system is in the
outskirts and nobody faces congestion. Cars move freely as well as buses. We have to wait and watch
what happens in future.
STEPS FOR IMPLEMENTING COMPREHENSIVE MOBILITY PLAN
NUTP gives us an opportunity for creating a people friendly city. And the first step towards this is that
the city has to make a Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP)
I don’t think Lucknow has made any CMP. There have been, I understand, some traffic and
transportation studies, which stress on car traffic. CMP proposes how we ensure mobility of people, safe
bicycle, safe public transport etc. And once that has been approved by the Ministry of Urban
Development, it must have Alternative Analysis. The project flows from CMP and then DPR 1, feasibility
study and then funding by JNNURM.
IMPERATIVES WITH NEW BUS PROCUREMENT
I have talked about creating a Rapid Transit system. I understand that last year Ministry of Urban
Development gave grant to U.P. for bus procurement. The danger in bus procurement is that it only
acquires buses and that is not a system. We have to think that once we have good buses we have to
come out with the whole plan- eventually who would be running it, what would be the routes,
infrastructure, bus stops, etc. One of our research studies shows that if we only increase the number of
buses in the system without making infrastructure changes then there are more fatal accidents. The
reason is that pedestrians and bicycles are very vulnerable. If we look at any city including Delhi, 60% of
the time impacting vehicles are buses. Only on the BRT corridor in Delhi we had zero deaths in 2009. No
deaths on bicycles and cars were reported. Since 2008 April when we started working, up to December
2008, there were 6 deaths and that was with buses moving at 70 km/hr in the exclusive lanes. Therefore
rumble strips were installed in the bus lanes to control bus speeds. We could show that by doing a
different infrastructure design, with same people and same behavior, like people still crossing the road
any where they feel like, there were no fatal accidents.
Does the city know how they are going to finance the operations when new buses come to Lucknow?
There has to be a financial plan because we know that in 70s also many cities introduced bus services
and by late 80s many had to be wound up as they couldn’t compete. So we have to have a financial plan
for the buses we are going to acquire. Financial planning should address concerns like if we increase the
ticket price more than 75 p/km then people will use two wheelers because our two wheeler ownership
is very high and with a modern two wheeler one can go at 60 km/h and marginal cost of using it is very
low.
Possible Interventions for Lucknow
We had done some very sketchy exercises In Lucknow in 2005 and we found that these 30 km main
roads from Railway Station going to Indira Nagar are worth exploring and if not completely, introduce on
them some kind of special infrastructure for buses and create special stops for para transit vehicles.
Most of the time, the right of way is adequate but there are places where it will be, I guess, 20-25
metres in small stretches. Mostly there is enough right of way. When we want to create exclusive bus
lanes, we need about 32 meters right of way. When we introduce buses, we have to think where bus
stops will come and we have to always keep in mind that people have to cross the road to get to bus
stops. Every bus user has to cross the road, if not in the morning, in the evening because then the bus
will stop on the other side of the road. So we have to think about the whole plan. That’s why we need to
have first the guidelines to think what is optimal.
These are examples of cities which have done this. I don’t think Lucknow is there yet but I think it is ideal
that Lucknow should be there now.
The other thing which is very much within our reach is that when we have bus procurement, we can
easily, at this stage, go in for intelligent transportation. This is actually quite simple because the new
buses are GPS enabled and we can ask for it. And just having GPS enabled buses won’t be good enough
because we have to create a control centre and we can start introducing passenger information system.
Indore is among the first to do it on its own. They have done some very interesting work on this. So
even simple thing like when the bus stop is displaying expected time of arrival of a bus starts helping
people to use buses. These technologies are very much within our reach. I don’t know if Lucknow has
gone in for low floor buses. 400 mm floor height is ideal. We can make it wheel chair friendly with a very
short ramp. Kneeling is not required, kneeling loses time. So, just by opening a short manually operated
ramp, the bus becomes wheel chair friendly. Things like fleet management, passenger information
system, workshop management can also be organized.
For para transit vehicles we can make organized stops etc. and then of course, a bus system priority
plan. Operational plan is required right away as bus procurement is already underway and then
eventually the infrastructure. Without those seven things that I showed, which together make a system,
we cannot expect to get the full benefit. And without infrastructure, our numbers show that there will
be more fatal accidents and that has to be kept in mind.
So that’s the third option we can look at. If we have bus procurement already done then to run it
immediately, create a control centre and eventually move towards having on least some roads some
bus priority infrastructure to get the best from the new procurement. If comprehensive mobility for
Lucknow plan is already being done and, very interesting things which can flow from is non motorized
vehicle master plan.
Making cities bicycle friendly does not mean creating exclusive lanes everywhere. It only means that the
roads which have fast traffic need exclusive lanes but on the other roads, we ensure that car does not go
above 30 km/ hr by doing traffic calming. Small roundabouts, different textures, road humps are the
small things that can be done as engineering measures and with these we can make the whole city
scheme. That’s how the bicycle master plan can come up. And funding for that is available from Central
Govt.
I think Lucknow can do some very visible projects. It can take up a street of say 5 km and make these
small changes there. Many examples that we have seen from Nanded and Delhi, can be replicated there.
This model street can be developed with ideal signage, markings, textures, traffic calming, and spaces
for street vendors’. We can change the pedestrian infrastructure etc. and make some visible changes so
that we can say here is a 5 km model street in Lucknow that rest of the city can follow..
Responses to questions
For democracy, we have to have a strong civil society. I am only an academic. My experience is that we
do have some really good examples in the world of a very strong leadership. We saw an example of
Bagota. Mayor of Bagota said he was almost impeached for doing all this but he still went ahead and
now the whole world thinks that is the best system in the world. On the other hand we can’t wait for the
best leadership. Therefore, it is important for the civil society groups, whether there is good political
leadership or not, to organize and insist on that. And RTI is, I think, a very powerful instrument that we
have at our disposal. Now we can certainly ask questions how plans are being formulated, where the
money is being spent etc. At least the transparency has to be there. In fact for many of the plans under
JNNURM, it is required to have citizen’s participation and public meetings before finalizing the plan. So
informed civil society groups can make use of RTI and bring pressure on decision makers.
If we look at the conventional guide book it tells us that before we cross the road, we should look left,
then right and then left again and make sure that the car is not coming fast. And observe your own
behavior when you cross the road next time. So when they did the study they found that (i) we don’t
look 1,2 &3 but we look several times because unless we look several times we cannot judge speed and
(ii) when children are only this high, six and eight years old, from this height what looks as something
very fast is actually not fast. So they don’t have cognitive skills developed to make these judgments and
once children are taught something at school, and I am sure all of us have experienced that, when they
come home, they say that teacher has said this, don’t tell me anything. They become overconfident. So
they stop taking help from adults and stop listening to other people and parents. So, the new theory
says that children can only be taught that road is a dangerous place, do not cross it alone and always
take the help of somebody. If you give them more than this information they don’t have the cognitive
skills to absorb it.