The increase in traffic congestion in Indian cities, particularly Bengaluru, is due to many reasons, from rapid urbanisation to a rise in commerce and employment.
Dr MA Saleem, an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, whose current position is Additional Director General of Police (Administration), writes about issues of and solutions to traffic management in his comprehensive book Traffic Management in Metropolitan Cities: A framework to provide sustainable strategies to overcome traffic congestion and ensure greater safety on roads . “Today, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad have nearly 25 million vehicles between them,” Saleem writes in the book.
The book has 12 chapters, which address everything from traffic management from the perspective of law enforcers to citizen participation and road accidents. The book is lucidly written, backed with facts and figures, without academic jargon, which makes it accessible for every kind of reader: laypersons, traffic police officers, and traffic and city planners. “I have converted my PhD thesis on traffic management into this book. I started my thesis, which I did from Bangalore University in 2006 and completed it in 2010,” says Saleem, who has been working in traffic management for six years.
Saleem says: “There are almost 80 lakh vehicles in Bangalore, and at any point of time we have 15 to 16 lakh vehicles on the road. One solution is to increase the capacity of the roads, which may not always be a good idea; how many flyovers will you construct? So the only other way is to increase public transport.”
He admits that one of Bengaluru’s problems is not having enough public transport. “However, now, a lot of work is happening in public transport. The second and third phases of the Metro will be coming up so there will be a great relief.” The onus to use public transport also lies on commuters. “Many people have switched over from personal to public transport. Many times people purchase cars not out of need but out of aspiration. In Scandinavian countries, people have Mercedes cars so they don’t have any more aspirations beyond this. They use cycles and public transport.”
The lack of good planning has led to a whole host of problems. Saleem agrees to this and says: “IT companies in south-east Bangalore has led to traffic congestion. Today, most people live in the south and western parts of the city, but they travel to the east and south east for work. That is why there is a need for public transport.”
He says that the northern part of Bengaluru has better managed traffic: “This is because the need for transport is less and the infrastructure there is very good.”
