The Hindu Business Line : Resolving the crisis in traffic management

IT IS said that over 200 vehicles are being registered daily in Bangalore city. For anyone who has sat for hours in a vehicle trying to get through Airport Road or Dairy Circle, the future must seem like a nightmare. The chaos is not unique to Bangalore and is replicated in scores of cities in India as the booming automotive industry presents a multitude of products to upwardly mobile consumers. The individual need not wait anymore to save the money to satisfy his dreams. Finance companies are willing to lend, and the two- and four-wheeler manufacturers offer a wide range to satisfy varying budgets. When the rubber hits the road, your dream gets grounded in traffic for hours every day.

Hardware problems

An easy vent for all frustration is to blame the public authorities for the state of affairs. It is clear that several road bridges, especially over railway lines, are too narrow and need to be expanded; we need more flyovers at major intersections, and roads are not laid on time after repairs or pipe-laying. These are important constraints and all deal with what we can label as the hardware of traffic management. Another side of the picture is the systems. We need rules about emissions along with regular checking of vehicles for compliance, traffic laws must be transparent in administration, and licensing procedures made more rational.

Authorities more often respond in a random manner to deal with the crisis of the day. Loud complaints would lead to a policeman placed at a busy and chaotic intersection, but when the policeman is needed elsewhere, chaos returns. Already, the present situation is stretching the limits of the resources of the public authorities.

The Bangalore City police have begun training home-guards and are also using an NGO working with underprivileged children to help manage the confusion in the city streets. These efforts are like putting a band-aid to a problem that should be rightly diagnosed as a cancer and not as a skin wound.

The consequences of letting things slide are pretty severe. Vehicles crawl along causing air and noise pollution, the health crisis is further compounded by increasing stress levels of drivers and passengers, and productivity falls as people spend more time commuting between places.

Software of the system

One area that has been totally ignored till now in traffic management is the software. By this I mean the attitudes and behaviours of the people using the road. The world over, old cities make do with limited road space by a combination of software and hardware. The hardware includes proper traffic lights at intersections, rules pertaining to parking, one-way streets, and installing flyovers.

The software is the proper education and training of all those who use the common space — the roadways. When a majority of the users on the road follow commonly-accepted practices, it increases the capacity of the roadway in being able to handle a larger volume of traffic more smoothly. You will be able to drive fast through an intersection and a larger volume of traffic will flow at a point of time and space if you know that the person at the front of the oncoming lane will wait for his turn to turn right and not cut into the flow.

Traffic wishing to turn left must be confident that all those in the lane in front are also wishing to do the same and there are not a few errant vehicles that intend to go straight but have wandered into the wrong lane because they saw a gap they could slip into. A two-wheeler that snakes between lanes to get ahead slows others down as speed is reduced to avoid an accident. The net result is that fewer vehicles are able to use the road.

There is a limit to which we can expect the hardware and systems to compensate for bad road behaviour. If all those who arrive at an intersection without traffic signals do not know or subscribe to a common etiquette of who has the right of way, the result is a practice of creep. Every vehicle inches into the intersection and the one with the wheel ahead commands the right of way. Installing traffic lights at such an intersection where the volume of traffic does not justify it would only lead to slowing of traffic. Placing road dividers to compensate for errant driving slows traffic down as it boxes in the vehicles without space to allow for some manoeuvring.

Structural measures to solve behavioural problems are a very inefficient approach to a solution. Better traffic management requires people to know and subscribe to a better set of traffic rules.

Attempts to educate

Feeble attempts are being made to educate drivers. Have you seen the sign on the side of the road that says "Observe lane discipline". You may have missed it because of the poster that has been pasted on it, or the company that has paid to put its name below. Even if the sign is readable, I wonder how many drivers understand what that slogan means. Traffic parks have been created by some police departments and school children are taken there occasionally. It is a nice picnic and a good photo opportunity, but these barely scratch the surface of the problem.

What is needed is a concerted effort to educate all road users on the correct ways of driving, parking, and crossing the road. A basic theme that would underlie this educational push is that everybody benefits through faster movement by adhering to rules. The underlying theoretical argument is the classic distinction between individual and system optimisation.

An individual who thinks he can get ahead by violating the rules of the system contributes to slowing the system. A licence only gives one the right to drive; training and education are needed to learn the responsibility of driving.

The lone motorcyclist or autorickshaw driver believes that, at the traffic light, he can get ahead by crossing over to the on-coming lane and passing all the other vehicles to move to the front of the line. He does not realise that the on-coming vehicles, therefore, have to narrow down from two to one lane to accommodate these errant drivers and the entire traffic slows. If a pedestrian can see the scene from behind the windshield of what a lorry driver, hauling over 10 tonnes of material, sees and can do when the driver has only moments to swerve, the pedestrian will think twice before jay-walking again.

Who should initiate?

Now who should take this initiative to educate the public? The classic reaction will be that it is the responsibility of the government; say, the police and the licensing authorities. That may well be true, but what is needed is a stakeholder approach to the problem. Just as neighbourhoods have taken the initiative to form welfare associations to look after their civic needs, we need an organisation that would take the initiative to deal with the software of traffic management. We need a privately-sponsored organisation with deep pockets and the ability to come up with creative solutions. The companies which benefit from smooth and safely flowing traffic, namely, manufacturers of vehicles and auto components, insurance companies which sell vehicle and life policies, and financing companies which fund purchases of vehicles have a deep stake (more profits) in better traffic management.

Our sleepy automobile associations who now content themselves with printing maps and travel directions can also play an important role. All these bodies need to get together and fund the creation of one national organisation that has a burning mission of educating the users of roadways on appropriate behaviour. This organisation will take the responsibility to liaise with the various stakeholders involved in redesigning systems, curriculum, producing training materials, and so on. Having the representatives of all those other organisations on its board should make the process easier.

A systems approach to the problem will lead to tackling it at several levels. Some actions are a part of start-up and others need to be taken in a sustained manner as part of maintenance.

Rewards and punishments should be built into the process. A sample of the kinds of initiatives that would cumulatively help to solve the problem.

Driving schools need to be set up for conducting beginner and refresher courses on proper driving practices. Licensing authorities will have to require that all applicants for driving licenses should have undertaken this course before road tests. Instructors need to be trained, and provided with requisite materials.

Training materials (print and video) need to be developed that illustrate in a fun and creative manner good driving practices and the consequences of bad driving. Advertising agencies and training experts need to be involved in this process.

Serious violators of traffic laws would need to be required to complete a refresher driving course along with fines, before their license is reinstated.

Insurance companies should offer discount on premiums to those who have an accident free record and those who have taken refresher courses.

Educational and training materials should be disseminated to large transport organisations such as commercial transporters, bus transport corporations, associations of taxi and autorickshaw drivers for re-education of current license holders. Commercial organisations should be asked to reward their professional drivers for maintaining a good track record in driving practices.

Traffic clubs in schools and colleges can take care of managing the pedestrian crossings near the institutions. Some already do, but the practice needs to be extensive. Incentives for the institution (for example, cash award for the most active club) will help them sustain the practice.

Extensive prime time exposure on television channels should show clips of bad road behaviour and the consequences of it, to educate the general public.

It is said that companies involve themselves most effectively in socially responsible actions only when driven by self-interest.

With better traffic management in India, several companies would benefit through sale of their products and services. If action is not initiated by concerned companies on an urgent basis, there will perhaps be a ham-handed intervention by the government to regulate the number of vehicles on the road physically and we may all have to stand in line to get permits to allow us to own vehicles and perhaps get passes for the number of days in a month that we can use the vehicle.

The automotive sector will then have only themselves to blame for not having taken the initiative earlier to build their market.

(The author is professor of international business and strategic management at Suffolk University, Boston, US. His Internet address is cgopinat@suffolk.edu)

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