Notorious jams a killjoy

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Welcome to Delhi roads, where traffic moves when the light is green, ombre and even when it is red and where drivers, bikers, rickshaw-pullers and pedestrians never seem to have learnt any traffic lessons. The worse traffic situation in the capital is only getting worse by the day and substantiating this is a recent survey which states Delhi is world’s fifth most painful city for drivers. We find out why:

Traffic Jams
You leave home and a traffic jam is waiting for you at the first signal you reach. It is a real headache for every driver in a big city,” says Anshuman Girohtra, a civil engineer.
The jams these days don’t need any big reason to delay traffic movement. All it takes for the traffic to stand still is impatience, lack of respect for each other and poor traffic sense.
Marketing executive Prashant Bhatia says that traffic jams are created by the “accordion effect”. He explains that if a vehicle slows down unexpectedly, the driver behind uses the buffer space between his car and the car in front, and slows down to roughly the same speed followed by a ripple effect preparing a lethal recipe for jams. “It mostly happens on Naraina, AIIMS and South Extension flyovers leading to hours-long jams,” he adds.

Accelerated Motorisation
Though the city has many highways, freeways and numerous flyovers, it is still reeling under the problem of traffic congestion due to the accelerated rate of motorisation and people from other cities thronging Delhi in the past few years. As the population is increasing, so are the number of private as well as public vehicles to counter the influx.
“Possession of many vehicles is one of the main reason for the streets to be forever crowded. Delhiites love to shop for cars and an average upper-middle class house has a minimum of three to four small as well as big cars,” says Anand Chakraborty, a chartered accountant, who possesses three cars and feels his family needs them as it is not easy to do away with the luxury of a personal vehicle and travel by public transport.

Parking woes
Non-availability of sufficient parking space and irresponsible parking almost anywhere only adds up to complete chaos. Pavements are frequently completely blocked because of illegal parking of vehicles especially in narrow streets causing further congestion. Most roads in Delhi are in a bad condition with large potholes and uneven surface that just add to the bad driving conditions.

Teenage Driving
Teenagers between 15 to 17 years are the worst drivers. They do not own a valid license and also do not have any sense of traffic laws driving mostly without seat belts. Manini Sen, a DU student says, “They are intoxicated by a new sense of power and despite launching several drives for wearing helmets and seat-belts, the efforts of the traffic department have gone up in smoke in the absence of any strict action against defaulters and proper education in safe driving and traffic etiquettes.”

Machismo on the Roads
Frustration and the machismo” of men need no reason for their public display of aggression on the roads like an inflated balloon of anger ever ready to burst. Abusive behaviour only adds to the tally of reasons on why Delhi deserves to be the worst city in terms of traffic. “Absolutely zilch road etiquettes accompanied by lack of proper management and implementation of rules makes Delhi any driver’s nightmare. People here are always in a hurry to go nowhere, they skip signals, bully and abuse other drivers, bump into other vehicles and overtaking gives them kicks. Sometimes a tiff can be potent enough to culminate into killing. We citizens have to put in efforts more than the government to tackle this menace,” says entrepreneur and writer Vikram Mayor.