SUNDAY, APRIL 28, 2024
Amita Kanekar
Kudos to the Goans who managed to get a stay on the government’s massive cutting of trees in Siolim. According to the people’s petition filed in the High Court, the official plan was to cut a whopping 120 trees; 30 of these, including ancient giants and flowering mango trees, had already been axed and also chopped up so that no-one could even talk of replantation. And the reason for all this destruction? Road-widening.
Roads are being widened all over Goa, whether locals like it or not. It’s one of the government’s main ‘solutions’ for the traffic chaos in the State, the others being flyovers and new roads. This despite the fact that such solutions – of increasing road space – are well-known the world over to be useless, because the number of cars simply increases, to fill up the new space in next to no time.
So why are we going for such useless and destructive solutions? Especially when it is hardly difficult to find actual solutions for traffic problems these days. Forget the experts, even social media is rife with hard-hitting information and sensible ideas. For example, one of the many memes that has been floating around on Facebook et al for quite some time says: “No, you are not ‘stuck in traffic’. You are the traffic.”
We are the traffic – which means it’s we who are also the problem. But who’s paying attention? Instead, we fall for the government’s promises. Just wait for the new flyover, says the St. Cruz MLA about the crazy traffic gridlock currently affecting the Kadamba plateau; it will solve not just the traffic jams but also the deaths on the road. Even more ridiculous is the government ‘solution’ for the fatal accidents involving rented vehicles driven by Indian tourists. According to the police, accidents involving rented vehicles in Goa are double all others. But, instead of banning tourists from driving rented vehicles, the government wants them to sign a document saying that they will drive safely. Seriously? When everyone knows that Indian tourists, here primarily for the cheap alcohol, are very likely to be drunk even while signing the document!
But we the people also go with these crazy ‘solutions’. In Betora, Ponda, which has seen a spate of fatal accidents at one location, including the recent shoot-out, locals are reportedly demanding a flyover there. How can we imagine, after all the flyovers built recently in Goa, that a new one will help? Have any of Goa’s flyovers reduced the traffic congestion on the roads below? Or has the traffic just grown and GROWN, so that we have forgotten what life was like without traffic jams? What is even worse is that, it is precisely during those infrequent and ephemeral moments when the roads are relatively empty, that you get the worst ‘accidents’, almost always because of speeding four-wheelers with drunk drivers at the wheel.
Goa’s deadly traffic woes have become a bad joke, and the solutions even more so. But we might reach somewhere useful if we realise that we are part of the problem. Traffic chaos is not just because of bad roads; it’s also because of too much traffic. And accidents are not just because of bad roads either, but also because the drivers are unfit to drive. These are the problems that we desperately a solution to – though the solution itself is simple: much-improved public transport and reduced private vehicles.
Yes: both. Panjim’s (extra-) Smart City project recently announced that 60 new ‘smart buses’ are set to be launched in the city – a city which already has public buses. What about places that are woefully short of any public transport, like many parts of Satteri, Pernem, Sanguem and Canacona? Panjim’s problem is different: the existing buses are over-crowded, on limited routes, and do not find the space to move at any reasonable speed. The system needs improvement, but no improvement will be possible without restraining private vehicles.
The combination of these two measures is the only solution to the currently insane and deadly traffic mess. The number of vehicles on the road must go down. And not through stupid measures like even and odd license plates, not when so many households are multi-vehicle! The real way to start would be dedicated roads, and dedicated lanes on multi-lane roads, for public transport; along with a ban on four-wheelers containing less than 3 people, at least on main roads. An essential corollary is that the public transport has to be high quality, frequent, available on almost every single road, and ideally free of cost. Not at all like what we have today.
But who is willing to go for this solution? Not the government, whose vast kickback culture is dependent on continuous construction projects, and who is least bothered about our lives, health, homes, or environment.
And most of us will not like any restrictions on our use of our personal vehicles either. Personal vehicles – and the bigger and fancier the better – have become embedded in our culture as symbols of success, pleasure, freedom, power, machoism, you name it. The personal vehicle is hardly just a means of getting from place to place; it has become a huge entertainment space in itself, all about recreation, showing off, and multiple thrills, beginning of course with speed, and including air conditioning, music, seat-beds, and of course internet connectivity and screens. Who cares that it is illegal to even make a call on your mobile while driving? Now, even two-wheelers offer internet screens so that you are up-to-date on social media happenings 24 x 7. Yes, two-wheelers, whose users suffer the most fatalities on Goa’s roads.
With this kind of road culture, and this kind of government, it looks impossible to achieve anything close to sensible and safe road traffic. There is then no point getting upset over the traffic jams and accidents, the flyovers slashing through homes, and the hundreds of destroyed trees. It’s a choice we ourselves have made.
(Amita Kanekar is an architectural historian and novelist)
