There is increasing protest in the U.S. against the craze for car parking. More space is being allotted for parking of cars than for houses because of wrong policies. The same is happening in Mumbai and other cities and this is going to create a big crisis in the coming days. A new book by David Grabar about the heavy[Read More…]
Pune Metro railway has become a laughing stock. Few people are travelling and there are any number of jokes on the social media that it should be let out for wedding parties and other celebrations. Mercifully, it has spared the historic district, it has not gone there. Jaipur Metro has done that . It is also a big failure as[Read More…]
Imagine you are driving your car and you notice garbage in the middle of the road, the heap is so big that you have to navigate around it, but that might be risky as the road is full of drivers like you who are in equal hurry. You eventually decide to wait and once the rush and the risk is[Read More…]
Mr R.C. Bhargava, the high profile chairman of Maruti Suzuki, and the likes of him owe an explanation to the public for the situation so visible in many places in the country. There is a blatant encroachment by the motor car showroom on the footpath as well as the prominent artery S.V. Road in Bandra in Mumbai. And a serious[Read More…]
The poor are often unfairly blamed for straining Mumbai’s infrastructure, making it dirty.In fact, it can be argued that It is the rich who are in good measure responsible for making it dirty, consuming most of the land, grabbing more and more of it from the poor, causing severe road congestion and air pollution with their cars. One has only[Read More…]
It is good that Aditya Thackeray, Maharashtra’s young environment minister, found time during his visit for the recent Glasgow climate summit to study the working of London Transport organization. He noticed that London operates 9000 buses, 75 per cent of them double deckers. He made the point during a conference on infrastructure yesterday. He did no talk about the[Read More…]
Many parts of the world observed today, September 22, as the international car-free day, a day for freedom and safety for pedestrians. The United Nations has supported priority for pedestrians. But the Indian government is busy encouraging cars, it has just announced a productivity linked incentive (PLI) scheme to subsidise the industry to the tune of thousands of crores of[Read More…]
I was very sad to hear of the death this morning of Dinesh Mohan, noted expert on road safety, in St Stephen’s hospital in Delhi. It is a big loss to the international campaign for road safety, he was a consultant to many countries and currently the U.N. is observing a road safety week. He did pioneering research on road[Read More…]
Due to the Covid lockdown in 2020, though the number of road traffic accidents declined yet deaths did not decline in the same proportion because people drive at higher speeds which continued to result in fatal accidents. Every year, more than 1.3 million people die in road traffic crashes – that’s one person every 24 seconds. Excessive speed is[Read More…]
A.R. Kardar was one of the biggest personalities of the Hindi film world. He was also very versatile as a writer, actor, producer, director and studio owner. His Kardar studio in Parel in Mumbai is now reduced to a big motor car repair garage, a fact the glamorous film world is not aware of. His daughter Yasmeen reminisces that the[Read More…]
It would be good if our politicians and bureaucrats did a little introspection like Bangalore’s traffic police commissioner Ravikanthe Gowda. He said he had not travelled by a bus for the last twenty years and we make decisions about public transport without using public transport ourselves and without involving people who are real users. This situation has to change, he[Read More…]
Here is an opportunity to stress the demand for democratisation of road space. The government dare not accuse the activists of being urban Naxals because its own guidelines in the wake of Covid suggest creating more space on roads for bicycles and pedestrians. Various studies conducted by the ministry of housing and urban affairs MoHUA show that about 16-57% of[Read More…]
The central government’s ministry of housing and urban affairs has recommended holistic planning for pedestrian friendly market spaces in various cities and municipal areas in the country in consultation with stake holders. The advisory issued by Mr Durga Shanker Mishra, department secretary, last month has also suggested million plus cities to select at least three market places for pedestrianisation &[Read More…]
After walking on Bangalore’s or Benguluru’s fashionable M.G. road earlier this week I casually hopped into a bus at Anil Kumble circle named after the former Indian cricket captain. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the fare was only Rs. 5 for Shivaji Nagar bus station. A distance of a little less than a km. but still the[Read More…]
One has to be really affluent or be in rich surroundings to walk with ease in India, it seems. I was in a very upmarket gated colony of bungalows in Bangalore last week. There were footpaths on both sides, lined with palm trees, there was little traffic and one could enjoy the walking. This is a highly protected environment. The[Read More…]
The roads are regarded as the ‘Lifeline of a country’ India has one of the largest and densest road networks in the world. But a newspaper recently published an alarming report stating that ‘according to 2015 data released by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 400 people die daily in road mishaps, ten times the entire global toll of[Read More…]
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My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away on August 22, 2023 at 3.10 AM. It is always difficult to deal with the passing of a parent, that too one’s mother. I thought the grief would go away. No it didn’t. All those bitter sweet memories won’t go away. At night I lie awake for hours. My friend, guide and[Read More…]
