The cab driver drives straight towards the Inner Ring Road in Attapur, then glances at the phone for directions. Shuffles gears and turns back the way he came. He drives through a narrow lane with dozens of speed-breakers to finally hit the Langer Houz Road.
Another day, another cab driver notices the heavy traffic on the Masab Tank flyover and takes the inner lane, hits Mallepally and exits near Mehdipatnam Kaman before driving on the Inner Ring Road.
“I just follow the map. I know the roads of the city but the path shown here has less traffic and I don’t want to think,” says Jehangir, a cab driver from Hyderguda area, when asked about changing directions.
As more cab drivers and vehicle owners decide the road to travel based on information from real-time online traffic maps, the inner lanes and gallies are getting heavy traffic. Traffic that is way beyond the carriage capacity of the narrow roads. Some of these roads are short cuts that go through densely populated areas for a short distance while others are long stretches that bypass the main roads with heavier traffic. “I stay in Domalguda... The Gagan Mahal road surely qualifies. It’s a one-way road that never has one-way traffic,” says a resident.
With multiple connecting roads between the Lower Tank Bund area and Liberty, the maps guide road users to the one that passes through the Gagan Mahal Road. The result is a day-long traffic mess with flared tempers, raised voices and honking matches between road users travelling in two directions.
Another example is the main road between Tadbun and Kompally, which gets heavy traffic. Many road users get directed to use another stretch that passes through Bapunagar and Centre Point Hotel. “It is not a wide road and has a number of residents moving about. But there is heavy traffic nowadays as many commuters end up using that road,” says G. Sridhar, who lives in the Bowenpally area.
Many residents and residential associations are fighting back but with limited success. On the L-shaped road that bypasses the Nanal Nagar Junction, residents have erected height barriers to keep out bigger vehicles from using the road. Residents of Nalanda Nagar have overseen the construction of two concrete height barriers after the metal ones were torn down using earthmovers by unknown vandals.
Many other areas have seen construction of number of speed-breakers to dissuade road users from accessing them. But as long as real time traffic maps channel the flow of traffic through inner lanes and narrow gallis , many residents in those areas will have to live with noise, dust and heavy traffic.
