Continued from Part 1 .....
Reading 1st part might make it seem that I am cribbing about Pune traffic. But I am not. I am just trying to paint a picture which would not deviate from reality :) I don't hate Pune traffic as much as I like to be part of it. And trust me, people who have lived in Pune all their life would have more to complain. Read on :)
(Quick Note: One definitely has choice to hire a car-driver and not worry about daily driving hassles. You can close you car windows, turn on the AC, read a book, listen to Radio Mirchi and not worry about any traffic woes while your driver is sweating it out in crazy Pune traffic. A driver costs around 6000/- per month and higher depending upon the car he has to drive )
After I came back to India I started going to work in about 3-4 days. And driving to and from work was the most obvious choice. (By the way - you can simply choose to get away by keeping a driver). When I started commuting daily to work, I used to be furious at the undisciplined drivers - I used to curse the bikers who used to cut across in front of me out of nowhere. But slowly I started getting molded and started fitting cozily in the crazy Pune traffic (after all I originally always had been a part of it) Being that I have been driving in Pune traffic from the earliest legally allowable age and being that I always used to drive during my previous trips to India, driving from day one in this traffic was not a worry – but driving without getting frustrated was what I was aiming for. I got over it in a couple of months. My anger has subdued. I have become patient. I tune into Radio-Mirchi and laugh at the PJs cracked on it. As days passed by and as I started waiting at some of the crowded traffic lights for 2 or 3 or sometimes more than 3 rounds, I could relate to people's impatience and understand why they are eager to jump the red light - and why people race off when the light has just turned red. I confess that when I am driving my bike, I unknowingly, subconsciously find myself shoved into the narrowest spaces in between cars. I initially used to think that the car drivers must be cursing me - but they don’t. And I nowadays find myself not getting mad at when I am driving my car and bikers are trying to get into space around my car. "Drive and Let Drive" - has to be your motto to survive in Pune traffic. I also have developed soft corner for PMT bus drivers - I can imagine how their blood pressure must be reaching unprecedented levels driving on these crowded roads with extremely crazy traffic. In fact they have earned my respect for doing their job with least number of accidents. I drive knowing that if I am behind a bus I should be ready to stop abruptly. Year 2007 alone added around 1.8 lac vehicles (all types combined) onto Pune Roads. Now tell me how the roads with limited capacity can handle this ? On top of that - people in Pune are gifted with impatience. But when infrastructure itself is not able to handle the traffic, people are going to get frustrated. Very understandable.
One good news is that Pune traffic police have shown some hopes in recent times. The new police commissioner of Pune - Dr. Satyapal Singh, seems to have taken traffic situation seriously. He has trained and deployed hundreds of young police cadets both men and women, as additional work force at traffic signals. They are armed with police-lathi and authorized to use it if people dont act sanely. Having a team of 4-5 (or sometimes even more) traffic cops at each main traffic signal has cleary made a difference in the situation than having a single traffic havaldar who just goes blank handling the enormous volume of vehicles at traffic lights. Its not easy. I would say - just turn off those traffic signals let the police control traffic manually. Signals go green or red for fixed time intervals and do not judge the imbalance in traffic patterns at nearby traffic lights. Past few weeks, police have indicated that manual control has worked better.
Past few weeks I have definitely noticed difference and traffic seems to me more controlled and smoother than before. Kudos to the police efforts. With this improvement a big welcome, the people also tend to cooperate. Recently a news daily printed a photo taken at a traffic light when all drivers were standing behind the white line of the Zebra crossing even when there was *no* policeman at the light. That was overwhelming. Being in Pune I am really not prepared for such pleasant shocks. A pilot project has been taken up at a couple of traffic signals - Close circuit cameras - which will record traffic violaters and send them a ticket. If you dont pay it in the alloted time, police will show up at your home and cause you embarassment. The results of it are to be known yet. Citizens of Pune are with the police on this.
I would like to mention to those who want to return to India (and expecially Pune) that getting over the traffic woes here is a matter of time and of course attitude - an attitude of not minding other people breaking rules, not minding those long travel times for short distances and an attitude to understand that there is a reason for every problem. It took me a couple of months to get there. Traffic rule breakers need to punished more often, but at the same time they aren’t to be blamed for things that happen due to lack of infrastructure. After-all in this crazy chaotic traffic, you see pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws, Maruti-Suzukis, Tatas, Toyotas, Fords, Skodas, Chevrolets, Renaults, Mercedes Benzes – all are treated equal by city’s crumbling infrastructure. That is enough to calm you down. Trust me, Mumbai and Bangalore traffic is much disciplined. A metro is on cards to ease Pune's congestions. Not sure if and how that will be successful. My wife once jokingly suggested that if there were time machines people could use them to set the office travel times to some convinient time either in the night or a time 20 years back (when the roads were not that crowded), and then reset the time on reaching office or home. But even that option will fail in Pune because there is so much traffic that all time slots of all eras will be heavily occupied :)
So till we have such a time machine or till the current efforts by police bear fruits (or till the time Nanos hit Indian roads like a pack of bugs and messes the traffic) everything seems to be fair in Pune traffic (or at least you need to think that way in order to not get frustrated :)
Authored by: Mandar Garge
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