The Hindu Business Line : Create space for people not cars, says expert

Dr V. Sumantran, Executive Committee Member, Chennai City Connect, and Executive Vice-Chairman, Hinduja Automotive Ltd, and Mr Enrique Penalosa, former Mayor of Bogota, Columbia, at an interactive session organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry in Chennai on Thursday.

Our Bureau

Chennai, Nov. 19

For residents of a city that has seen the number of bridges and flyovers grow rapidly in recent years, and an administration that prides itself on announcing more flyovers to ease traffic flow, Mr Enrique Penalosa, a former mayor of Bogota, presents some radically different views on traffic management.

Create space for people not cars, he advises. “How can you look at traffic without deciding what kind of a city you want to be?” Mr Penalosa asks.

As Mayor, he was credited with bringing in radical solutions in traffic management with the primary objective of improving the quality of life, creating more healthy public spaces for its citizens to spend time outside, leaving the footpath for pedestrians and introducing the concept of encouraging public transport rather than private transport.

Flyovers, he promises, can only be a short-term solution to speed up traffic flow. Within a matter of months, they will be as choked as the rest the roads. Across the world, no city has solved its transport issues by building more bridges; on the other hand, developed cities such as New York, Denver, San Francisco and Wiesbaden are spending billions of dollars to pull down the bridges.

The solution, he says, is in an efficient and effective public transport system — lesser number of vehicles carrying more people. Not necessarily through high-cost expressways which are like “fences in a pasture” that chop up spaces and cut out people, but exclusive lanes in an existing road. Discourage the indiscriminate use of cars, explore more innovative options, he says.

A number of cities around the world are looking at Bus Rapid Transit Systems. Cities with an effective public transport on the roads manage traffic better than cities with an extensive rail system.