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

Everything is fair in love and war and Pune Traffic (Part 2)

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