Everything is fair in love and war and Pune Traffic (Part 1)

After about almost 8 months since my return to India (Pune) and after a successful monsoon, it’s time to write my experiences about Pune traffic. Pune – a city every Puneite is extremely proud of (more than any other person is proud of his own city). I am no exception. Traffic in Pune though, is not a thing to be proud of anymore. Traffic along with pollution, has exploded in last 10 yrs and so has the indiscipline of vehicle drivers (2-wheelers, 4-wheelers, 6-wheelers). On the plus side I noticed that almost all roads are now in a very good condition and many of them have been widened. They are being maintained clean as well.

Breaking traffic rules has become second nature to Pune drivers. Jumping traffic signals, driving into no-entries, standing on other side of the road-dividers at traffic lights, driving on footpaths to get ahead of traffic, etc.. are some of the key highlights. And no one likes to be left behind in contributing to this nuisance - teenagers, motor-bikers, working people, senior citizens, college going girls, married women, mothers - everybody. Women, who used to be the "poor fellows quietly and sincerely obeying traffic rules" have now evolved in accordance with ‘survival of fittest’ law, to be equally undisciplined drivers and shown that they are a match for men even in breaking traffic rules. Kudos to them.

One of the most undisciplined category is ‘rickshaws’. Pune traffic goes so bad at peak hours that travelling in rickshaws (even though you keep on bouncing inside its suspension-less body) seems to be a bliss. But for people not inside them, rickshaws turn out to be a nightmare. Apart from bullying behavior of the rickshawalas - bad driving, tampering of meters, driving with broken headlights and tail-lamps, emitting smoke heavily from exhausts (mainly because their drivers mix kerosene with petrol, as it’s very cheap and most of the times the rickshaw-walas do not own the rickshaws they drive) – are standard norms nowadays.

Another blissful category of vehicles is – the PMT (Pune Municipal Transport) buses which stop bang in the middle of lane they are travelling when they approach a bus stop. This naturally triggers an outburst of beeps and horns from the vehicles that follow. And because they don’t care to stop close to the bus stop, the passengers that intend to get into them flood the road and add to the congestion. The bus drivers are trained to stop the buses over the zebra crossings, talk on cell phones while driving and jump the red signals often.

Authorities in Pune are grappling around means of handling this uncontrolled traffic situation. One experiment that was tried out was based on a successfully implemented model in Bogota (the idea being implementing something that works in a big city of a 'developing' country) . Its called the BRTS (Bus Rapid Transport System) – wherein the two central lanes of the road are allocated exclusively for travel of buses. A good system indeed if successfully implemented. Look at this image of the system in Bogota that I found at images.wri.org. Seems very cool.

Unfortunately, for Pune, this system has turned out to be a horror. This will only work if the frequency of the buses is such the number of people carried by them will compensate for loss of lanes for other vehicles. It would work only if people find it attractive enough to give up driving their own vehicles and make BRTS their mode of transport. But thats not to be. The authorities initially didn't even have the brains to make it compulsory for *all types of buses* to travel through the bus-lanes. ( Something quite expected from government authorities). And most importantly, how are people going to manage to cross the extremely crowded lanes with speeding vehicles ? How are they going to get to those central BRTS lanes ?


Unlike what is shown in this rendering (that I found somewhere on the web), there are no bridges or underground pathways to reach the central BRTS lanes. But Pune bus travellers eventually gather the guts to cross the crowded roads and do reach the bus stops ( if not hit by the speeding vehicles). BRTS has worsened the situation for everyone, except the bus drivers. Truly amazing. The activists are lobbying for its removal. But just recently I read the news that the authorities plan to implement this on more of Pune roads. God save us.

One heavy rainfall lashes the city traffic situation goes for a toss. Sevaral roads close down as they get submerged deep down below water. Reminds me of the panic that a snowfall causes on roads in a state like Texas which is usually not prepared to face one.

On my way to work one day, at one traffic signal, I saw a hoarding that referred to the traffic signal pole and said "Please, also respect this tri-color" (the traffic light was being called the tri-color). The poor traffic-light seemed like a helpless beggar, begging people to respectfully stop before it. People don’t seem to give a damn for such things. Some volunteers, a while ago adopted a Gandhigiri exercise and started handing out roses to those who broke traffic rules. The exercise bore no fruits. Besides, roses are too costly nowadays - 5 to 6 Rs a piece.. that too for embarrassing a driver who could be shameless enough to collect a few more such roses at other traffic lights and make a bouquet out of it for his wife or girlfriend. Not at all worth. (Please have no doubt in your minds that the roses I get for my wife - I buy those myself, they are not presented to me at traffic lights :)

Driving on Pune roads during each of my India visits used to give me more and more sense of the rapidly changing scenario in Pune. The traffic has gone so bad that it puts you to more of mental stress (rather than physical) . It puts your mind and attentiveness to test - by making you look around in all 8 directions all the time and watch out for people trying to shove in their bikes and scooters in the smallest possible space between bigger vehicles (that’s probably the reason why car drivers have mutually agreed upon "2 millimeters" as the safe distance between cars). In the US, traffic blocks are a usual thing. Blocks would make you wait or travel at a snail's pace. But you could mentally feel so secure about nobody cutting across lanes - that you can easily immerse your head in a paperback or hardcover copy of "Da Vinci Code" or "Harry Potter". You could forget that there is traffic behind or either side of you. Just watch out only for in front of you. Expecting a similar discipline to dawn upon Pune drivers would be too much. It would be like expecting Himesh Reshammiya (I can’t believe I cared to Google his last name to get it right) - to become a "musician" or a "singer" one day. (The thing in common between Pune traffic and Himesh Reshammiya is that both leave no stones unturned in causing high degree of pollution in their respective areas of work. Himesh often does his through his nose) . Forget the discipline, Pune drivers would curse you and argue with you if you stop politely at a red traffic light and cause obstruction to them when they try to jump the red signal. (Sometimes I feel I should have been a goondaa so that I could have left all my humility on my driving seat and got down and slapped such drivers. But God usually makes rules-following-citizens humble and little darpok also :)

Continued in Part 2 ..

Authored by: Mandar Garge