Facility for traffic to flow smoothly, if not freely, is imperative, especially in times of emergencies.
Last week’s fire at Chala, the commercial hub of the city, exposed the total lack of any such facility when fire engines found it tough to negotiate the busy traffic and narrow roads to reach the bustling market area. The incident was not a first for the city, with similar fires in the same area exposing the same drawbacks over and over again.
But are the traders the only lot to be blamed? Want to shop in Chala, make sure you are ready to walk and walk is the motto here. Even two-wheelers cannot move inside the narrow lanes, made narrower with wares that are displayed on the roads outside the shops and the haphazard parking of vehicles.
Add the fact that the market has the busy Kerala State Road Transport Corporation stand and the busier East Fort area nearby, and a re-run of November 14 is a possibility.
A bus stop in the city. A crowd is waiting impatiently for a bus. When one does turn up, there is much jostling to get inside. Sometimes the bus driver is too impatient to wait for all passengers to get on board.
What strikes an observer is the sheer effort which women, the elderly, and the disabled have to put in to get inside a city bus.
In many a bus, the first step is too high from the road. Added to this is the fact that the short stairway is too steep; this is particularly the case for a disabled person.
That is not all. At bus stops across the city, the “me first” culture ensures that anyone not physically robust is able to gain a toehold.
Anyone who misses one bus can wait patiently for the next one, and hope that all “first” folks are not hovering around. Or, they can wait for a much-more-expensive autorickshaw to roll by.
The traffic lights in the city generally switch to blinking amber after 10 p.m. It makes sense along most routes since the city has an early bedtime and the roads are emptied of vehicles by then.
But the Upplamoodu Junction, which used to turn off the red and green light until recently, now seems to have decided not to trust the instincts of the night driver.
During the day, the lights here turn green for as brief as 10 seconds. So, it is a mad scramble to make it to the other side of the junction, before the light switch back to the dreaded red.
In this bustling and very congested junction, traffic lights are absolutely essential. But at night, as they shine bright against the dark emptiness of the streets, they somehow seem out of place.
Moreover, their purpose is rarely served. Commuters halt for a moment, puzzled by the round-the-clock presence of stop and go lights.
But nearly all of them proceed to cross the junction before waiting for the light to turn green after checking both sides – just as they would had the light been amber.
The fact that the lights are working are treated more as an aberration, dismissed as something the operators forgot about.
