One who is living in Bhubaneswar over a long time will never differ with the fact that the city of his childhood days was better than present congested city. The situation is such that even after loss of vast patches of green cover due to road widening and other development works, the city dwellers are not very careful about the growing pollution and use vehicles for every sort of travel, be it for a long distance or short distance.
The present shape of Bhubaneswar is not the same as was dreamt of over sixty years ago when it became the State capital. The truth is despite all sorts of road widening works and flyovers, the roads are getting more and more congested.
Our planners are clueless as to the increasing density of vehicle population in the city and the city’s inability to cope with it. With finance facility made easily available by banks and other financial institutions, personal vehicles, especially cars and SUVs, are increasing. This factor is greatly contributing to the congestion problem of the city.
But then, the problem is not unique to Bhubaneswar alone, for no city in the world is free from the congestion issue.
let me take the example of Bangkok. A few decades ago, it kept on building roads, flyovers and so on, to tackle the traffic rush on road but it helped little. Then it realized that neither its transport problem got solved nor congestion was tackled; rather more people struggled to cross road or access those public transport infrastructure. Interestingly, it felt the necessity of pedestrian and cycling ways to find a way out. And, this worked wonders. Although a bit of expensive, Bangkok reclaimed some of the road space for cycles and pedestrians to decongest the city.
It is not just the issue that Bangkok faced. Perhaps, many of the world greatest cities like Seoul, New York and london too had to grapple with the same problem. But they invested more on building public spaces, underpass, unlocking the locked grid and putting in place more non motorized infrastructure to encourage people move on foot or by bicycle.
Interestingly, various studies show that in any given day around 49 per cent of Bhubaneswar’s population move on foot or use bicycle but the city’s infrastructure is not shared equally by the motorized and non motorized modes of transport. The authorities seem to be more careful about the motorized transport and hence, when roads get congested, they lay stress on investing in widening the roads or having flyovers.
The truth is over the years Bhubaneswar has developed around 700 km road network of which only little over 17 km is equipped with infrastructure believed to be for the cyclists and pedestrians.
Seoul has demolished flyovers to make it a pedestrian paradise. In New York, some big streets, once used mostly by car users, is now for the pedestrians. Every big or small city is now rebooting their urban plans where people are less dependent on vehicles using fossil fuel.
Bhubaneswar’s plan is based on neighbourhood grid system but over the years, unplanned growth left the planned city grapple with a variety of problems. The result is not only was Bhubaneswar divided into many parts but discouraged people to commute using bicycle or on foot.
So instead of building swimming pools and Berlin walls, Bhubaneswar needs to explore options on how to open those grids once used by public by making the city distance shorter. Perhaps it is not too late to correct past mistakes with appropriate planning intervention by investing in underpasses or foot over bridges or zebra crossings to sort out the severe congestions of the city.
Solutions to Bhubaneswar’s congestion will never get solved unless the city takes the responsibility of catering to the need of 49 per cent non-motorised transport users and develops a culture with a message that streets are not meant for cars or their parking alone; rather it is for the movement of people on foot or by bicycle.
(Dr Rout is an urban management practitioner. He can be reached at @piyushrout)