What differentiates a true city from its suburban or rural counterparts is often how many shops and services can be cramped in a given circumference of square kilometers. The bigger the city, the more cramped it is. The only other alternative is that the bigger cities take up larger spaces in adjoining areas. Delhi Bangalore
Given this background, planning urban transportation is as complex a task as it gets. Ideally cities should have a brilliant system of public transportation, so that its citizens can get from one end to the other with minimal cost. After all when one makes a city home, it is the entirety of width and breadth which is loved and what is loved should certainly be accessible.
Broad principles of urban transport are simple enough. Longer distances should be covered by fast moving transport mediums – like trains or metros. The intermediate distance needs to be covered with a dense network of buses, auto and rickshaw routes. If the city is longish, then the north- south connecting lines must be intersecting at sufficient joints by the east- west connectors. If a city is circular in shape, there must be frequent connections among the various concentric circles.
The simple reason that there is city transport is because if everyone had their own car or bike, it would be impossible to accommodate so much traffic in the roads. One would have to make the network of roads more dense, and each road broader to accommodate such a massive inflow of vehicles. Thus, trains, trams, metros, autos and taxis represent a simple sharing of resources which is much more efficient to transport all the people requiring to be moved to all the places they want to go to.
This idyllic system is made complicated by a number of factors. Transportation, except for state run transportation is a business enterprise targeted at making profits. There are multiple ways of making profits in the same business model – not always is the approach with the highest spread the most profitable. Thus there are routes which are frequented by auto drivers and routes which are avoided like the plague. Now customer demand exists in both – be it coming out of a mall, or trying to return home in a densely office dominated locality. The mall autos are simply looking at getting long distance passengers, while the office return guys may or may not get an auto depending on how much traffic the route towards his home contains.
Timings is another factor to be considered. Mornings and evenings are high demand periods where people are in a rush and willing to pay higher prices (if required) to get to work or home. Afternoons are slag periods and transport options are hard to come by in these times. Density corresponding to the rush periods is also a big consideration – trains, metros and buses are bursting at the seams as more passengers are squashed inside. Rates for going to the outskirts of the city or sparsely populated areas (where a return fare may be harder to find) are often higher, and yet ironically, rates for going into densely populated places (with traffic) are also higher!
The luxurious alternative of a radio taxi too is fraught with difficulties. More often than not, a bored voice will inform you that there are no cabs available. The distance to be plied is often asked for at the beginning and the shorter ones discarded without a moment’s thought. Nowadays an added layer of menace has arrived, the agency confirms your ‘booking’ without confirming your reservation. Half an hour before your cab is due, you may just find yourself stranded in the middle of the night without any transportation available.
People know all of this and more instinctively. That’s why purchasing a car is one of the first things young couples indulge in. Then they can travel in the luxury of their own private world, with old songs wafting in a perfumed cool space, with the privacy of loved ones. It may be disastrous for the environment, but compare all the above woes to the smooth pride of a fast accelerating vehicle, and the desolate environment around seems miles away, distanced in thought though not space. Is there no hope for this system to work?
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