Fighting chaos on the roads

The roads of Delhi are ruled by chaos. The road belongs to anyone: cars and mopeds honk in harmony as people weave carts through the traffic, surrounded by rickshaws and pedestrians looking for a gap to cross. Jhanja Tripathy is aware of the traffic chaos in this Indian metropolis as she makes her way to the Ministry for Housing and Urban Affairs. She has been in charge of budgets and financing here for the past four years. “In a country like India with a growing population and lots of people moving to the cities, space on the roads has to be divided between a range of different road users,” she says, describing the situation. As in many other developing countries, large cities in India are fighting a rise in individual transport.

The reason behind this is actually a positive one: economic progress and rising prosperity. The growing middle classes are queuing up at car dealerships and the number of cars is rising all the time – bringing with it all the negative consequences we are already familiar with: toxic emissions, air pollution, fuel consumption, high accident rates, constant traffic jams and long waits for commuters, particularly during rush hour. “Of course, we have to convince people to do without their cars more o"en,” says Jhanja Tripathy, “but to do this, we need intelligent traffic management.”

For poor people especially, buses and trains remain the only form of transport, simply because they can’t afford a car and often have to travel a long way to work. And for more prosperous Indians, “use of the railway has to be so attractive that they will gladly do without their vehicle as often as possible,” explains Jhanja Tripathy.