Traffic Control in Hyderabad

[Ravi Devulapalli]

Hi Guys & Gals, Ladies & Gentlemen,
I\'m a proud Hyderabadi, and love the city. However, the city (like the rest of the country) has a pathetic traffic control systems in general. Can we all throw some ideas based on our Geographical knowledge of the city, and suggest some better ways to direct traffic during rush hours? We all know that we have problems, but what we need is some workable solutions!! How about, we start gathering some ideas, and then hopefully some political head (like Mr. Naidu) notices the ideas, and hopefully does something about it?? Feel free to add to the solution..

[Dewana]

Traffic system cannot be controlled or altered in a sensible way unless the people behave good.

[Taher Ali]

Compared to previous years I think we today have better roads, sign posts and traffic control system. The problem is with the ever growing population of the city. Developments/Changes cannot go at the same rate as the population growth. Whatever control system we might have we have to operate within the \"CITY\" limits which is overly over populated. More the controls, more the delays and more longer drives and runs.

The Govt should concenterate more on further expansion of the city limits and promote developments / residential colonies / shopping malls / offices etc along side should think of relocating / branching crowded offices /institutions. This would help in diluting the traffic automatically. It would also contribute significantly to the control of pollution, public utilities - water, electricity, telephones, public transport etc etc etc.

It is definetely a long journey and that too provided everybody takes it seriously. Then we can really see the results of control systems in place.

[Ravi]

Taher,

You made some excellent points. This is exactly what we should be pitching. We are not looking for concrete ideas. In general if we can scream with broad ideas, I’m sure even the deaf would be able to hear us. I think distributing the business districts will definitely help distribute the traffic. Probably, State should give huge tax benefits to those businesses that are interested in doing it. This tax relief should be time-limited to encourage the businesses to move out say in about 3 to 5 years. But in the short run, I think we should look into rescheduling the Business hours Vs School/college/university hours. I think this will help distributing the traffic somewhat evenly. I’m sure the hours are different already, but I don’t think every school (both private, and public) district follows them. If Govt can make a documentary out of this proposal, and broadcast on TV with real benefits, there is a chance that people might accept/follow the ideas. Also, as mentioned by Dewana, we must force people to behave by observing strict punishments. Punishments need not be monetary, but can be community service related such as cleaning the streets etc., Corruption poses a great threat to forcing any kind of punishments in our society, but a decent human being should be able to distinguish between the good and bad and help our city/nation progress into the next generation!! Where there is a Will, There is a Way!
Any case, please don’t give up saying nobody can resolve these issues. We as a society are in general very accepting natured, and the newer generation should start changing that. Youth and the middle aged must work towards the change, and I’m sure every one of us is looking forward to it. As they say, Rome was not built in a day, and so is Hyderabad. This is the time for all good citizens of the city to take control of the situation!

[Rajiv]

First of all, I would ask, where is the ring road for Hyderabad which was planned about 20 years ago. There is just a broken ring here and there. When will the ring road be a complete ring. We can find a few pieces of it here and there near Uppal etc. For an evergrowing city like our Dea Hyderabad, we should have an expressway circling the city, so much of the traffic would avoid the narrow lanes to reach their destinations. Traffic also can move faster. Thereby the traffic in the main city gets diluted. Our Hon CM completed the flyovers, but they are obsolete now. They too are narrow and serve no much purpose. I have seen vehicles avoiding the Flyovers and theryby jamming the traffic under the bridges. I request out IT CM to take a look at the beltways / expressway around the US cities. Averyone can see those even in Yahoo maps. Ring roads means they are real closed loops.

Hope and pray, our Hyd becomes a betterplace everyday.

[tarun]

best idea to control the rule violaters would be putting cameras on the traffic lights poles and then taking snaps of them and send a penalty notice to their residence , actually this is what happenes in developed countries.Also there should be some traffic police guys here and there on the roads , watching such traffic rule violaters.But them main flaw is here , the traffic guys cannot do anything as their main weakness accepting bribes. We cannot do anything , change has to come in people.

[tarun]

out great govt goes on giving licences to malls , but never cares to think about the parking place for those malls na dpeople start parking on the roads and thus make roads much narrower. parking is the major issue in hyderabad.car owners are the worst guys , they never ever care about others when they park their cars , they are live examples of educated idiots.This includes even the govt cars.

[Mohan]

It is common knowledge that on an average, in Hyd city alone three to four fatalities occur everyday.
Two wheeler riders invariably are the victims.
Solution:
Till such time, the roads are widened to cater for the increased traffic, overtaking in any form should be prohibited in certain streches of road(except for life saving vehicles and law enforcing vehicles) and to effectively implement the ban , mobile courts with authority to impose spot fines be established.
This could be tried for an experimental period of say one month on selected roads and if successful, enforce it in other areas.
By prohi bitin overtaking, no one would suffer as in Hyd , for that matter in most of our country, time has little value and over a strech of FIVE MILES, between 40 mph and 25 mph, difference is 4mt 30sec!
This may reduce the fatalities on the city roads and also reduce the workload of traffic police. Incidentally the fines could be good source of income to improve other traffic facilities.

[Ravi]

I think we have heard some more excellent ideas from Mohan, Tarun, and Rajiv. To summarize all the ideas thus fars, 1.we need to plan for identification traffic violators, 2. Restrict overtaking in busy traffic areas, 3. Plan for more ring-road type of expressways surrounding the city, 4. Eliminate street side parking, and build more public parking facilities away from the streets, 5. Provide tax benefits for those businesses that are willing to relocate out side the city, 6. add more meaningful punishments and implement them strictly (may be by offering more bonus awards to the traffic police based on their punishment awards) in a way that impacts people in a positive way, 7. Make continuous efforts to communicate/broadcast using different media, the importance of controlling pollution, and avoiding serious traffic delays on a daily basis. I think these are all very valid options, and I think people that have contributed to these ideas should feel proud of thinking about them. Now, we need to get some attention from the Govt officials to notice these ideas. Any body has any suggestions? I saw the following web site for our state Govt, and found few contact email addresses for chief Minister’s office. Please look at the site, and everybody start sending some emails to the officials until somebody responds. The web site link is: http://www.andhrapradesh.com/. I salute to all the contributors thus far, and remember the mission has just begun, and please continue contributing more ideas. I’m sure we will see some results if we constantly pursue. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!!

[Baskar]

The police should start cracking down on two wheelers and lorries. They are the major culprits when it comes to lane discipline. Hyderabad has wider roads than many US cities but the lane discipline is lacking. Precisely due to this most of the deaths/accidents are for two wheeler drivers and an astonishingly higher percentage of accidents involve two wheelers.

Fellow two wheeler drivers, obey the rules... It doesn\'t matter whether you hit or get hit it is you who is going to pay.

[tarun]

ravi,
its good to know that you are asking us to mail our suggestions in the official website of AP , but who has the time or who has the interest to look into such suggestions? many such suggestions are going unnoticed which come in the daily newspapers.I just hate to waste my time writing to such a \"dead website\".I shared some points with u guys here , becoz I know that somebody will be listening to me here in this bulletin board.Why do u thing i wud write in that ap.com where not even a single official will even care to look at my mail?Aint i right in saying so?

[Ravi]

Tarun, I can clearly understand your frustration. That is where politicians beat us the citizens in general. In Telugu there is a saying ‘Mondivadu Rajukanna Balavantudu’, meaning the most stubborn person eventually wins. Therefore, keep sending the emails to these sites, and I guarantee you that one of these days somebody will notice our suggestions! Of course, we will all have to do it together. If only one individual sends it, then there is a chance of being ignored, but if every one of us sends these reminders constantly, they will have to notice!! Again, we are not losing anything by just sending an email, but even if one Govt official notices and acts on our recommendations, everybody will benefit! Thanks for your continued support.

[vicky]

hi there are too many problems in hyderabad even the city has been developed much, the traffic has become more nowadays and in the night times when returning from office or from any malls, there were plenty of traffic on roads and it takes nearly an hour or 2 hours to go home.. i just have few ideas to reduce the traffic let me share.
As everyone said the timing of schools and colleges has to be change, and the flyovers has to be built more, perhaps there are only few now.. And everyone should maintain the traffic rules should not overtake at signals and should not cross the left stop line...
And the government has to build the skywas which start from one ouscut of the city and should be end at the other outscut of the city as it was introduced in singpore...
and from that skyway there should be many roads which ends at each main place in the city like branches connected to the tree so that everyone can go through the skyway if there is traffic on the roads and can get down at main places where they have to be...
By this idea we can reduce the traffic and it might be cost efficiecy bt if the politicians works right onto this idea they can easily do this...

[Aspraso]

It is a very sad and poor reflection of the behavior of motorists/drivers (2, 3 or 4 wheelers) that we have automated traffic signals, yet at every one of those traffic-signals we also NEED a policeman to stop/start/direct the drivers. We Hyderabadis need a policeman to keep the left free, we need a policeman to regulate the right lanes which allow u-turns.

Did we think for a moment, our traffic policemen put in long hours of duty in very poor working conditions for very paltry pay and attract the least respect from the drivers, each of whom expect the right-of-way for themselves and disdainfully disobey the traffic policeman's stop/halt/regulatory signals. Undoubtedly, there are amongst the traffic policemen some very poor examples too -- armed with tyre-locks or a tow-vans they set about fining/challaning cars parked even in the bylanes. Take another example, these poor examples of a traffic policeman have penchant for exclusively stopping 2-wheelers for checks -- are the 2-wheelers the only offending motorist group? They are the largest group on the roads but certainly not the only offenders.

There is a need for a huge improvement in behavior on drivers and the regulators. I travel a lot within India too, and witness traffic surges in the other metros too but the road-users are several shades better behaved and more disciplined than in our Hyderabad. So, it is all in our attitude. Remember because we are indisciplined and poorly behaved, it is we and we alone who provide the opportunity for the policemen to look down upon us from a higher platform.

[Zubair]

Hi
From the past 1 year i am doing some survey about the traffic issue. road safety and problem we are facing every time. finally i got solutions which is decrease traffic and increase in Road safety. i dont know whom i need to contact. can you please suggest. i am sure that if this rules apply u see the changes in a couple of days.