Chennai Metro does a disservice to pedestrians at Alandur

I found it both shocking and amusing that Chennai Metro Rail (CMRL) has done little to make it easy for commuters at the Alandur station. As the following series of photos will show, suppose you arrive by a bus from the South to go to Koyambedu CMBT, it is impossible to cross the GST Road outside Alandur Station without taking a detour to the South for 300 metres, and use the old subway, that was built before the Metro was completed, and have a brief tussle with the traffic.

There is no clear path to the crossing point, and I am sure after dusk, it is poorly lit. The commuter has to struggle to find the way with no pointers to the subway either in the station or outside.

Older adults, children and the disabled are better-off not trying this crossing.

The road south from the Alandur Metro Station leading to the subway (in background). Photos: G. Ananthakrishnan

Note that there is no designated path to the subway, just walk through the traffic to the subway in the rear, centre.

At the subway entrance, the GST road is seen leading South, about 200 metres from the Alandur Metro station.

The subway plaque at right has the names of DMK leaders inscribed, making it all but certain that it will be ignored when the rival party is in power.

The view to the North: the subway leads to the footpath opposite the CMRL Alandur station. Photo: G. Ananthakrishnan

All public buildings are supposed to be friendly to the disabled according to a G.O. issued by the present AIADMK government, but this subway is not.

Closer to the rank of bus stops, the Chennai Metro Alandur station appears at right. Things could have been much simpler with a street-level crossing for pedestrians. Photo: G. Ananthakrishnan

And, here is a panoramic view of the Alandur Metro station with the bus bays on the opposite side, separated by a granite road divider.

Panoramic view of Alandur Chennai Metro Station on the right, the paver-block footpath outside, the GST Road and bus bays Northbound on the opposite side. No way to cross this point without walking some 300 metres.

While CMRL is trying to fix various things, it could look at these issues: Here is a tweet on how the autorickshaws are in no mood to ply by meter outside the Alandur station. You can see a couple of them waiting in the panorama picture. With some feeder bus competition, this situation could be avoided.

Chennai auto rickshaw guys are back to their ways again. Everyone at Alandur (Metro station) refused to go by meter. I refused to take it.

— Shrinath (@javashri) August 9, 2015

On the same topic, my own tweet shows that there is no easy bus link between Metro at Alandur and the Tambaram-Beach suburban railway at St. Thomas Mount. The tweet makes it clear that you have to depend on a public bus that runs once in 15 minutes, going by Google’s tracking of Chennai MTC operations.

How #Chennai Metro fails itself, commuter: 15 min interval for inter-line bus no feeder. @UITPnews @MedMezghani pic.twitter.com/N17Ztc8O0C

— India Transit (@straphanger_in) August 16, 2015

Tamil Nadu’s capital city fares poorly on walking indices. Things may be improving, but too slowly. Read this piece for context.

Urban Jungle: Chennai is a horror for people on foot

My Urban Jungle column in The Hindu on the difficulty of being a pedestrian in Chennai published today, is here. This column is part of a series on the city, and looks at the many aspects of suburbia from a personal viewpoint.

Beware when you tread on Chennai roads. The footpaths are barely there, and often hold nasty surprises. Photo shows a drain clean-up in progress on Kodambakkam Station Road. Note the various obstacles on the walker’s path.

It’s the deprived who suffer more in road accidents: research

Although situations in the rich and poor countries vary widely when it comes to road accidents, there seems to be a strong correlation between economic status and risk of injury and death in these events. 

That is the sense we get from statistics reported by The Guardian in this piece. There is considerable congruence between the experiences in India and the UK, and perhaps elsewhere, on the plight of pedestrians. The English report indicates that people in the deprived neighbourhoods, particularly pedestrians and children, are particularly vulnerable. 

There is considerable evidence available on the horror of pedestrian life in India. In the last two years, many high-powered cars have been launched in India that make it even more difficult to use the roads, because of the simple fact that people cannot run fast enough across crossings, to keep out of the way of these rapidly accelerating cars driven by semi-literate drivers.

A virulent epidemic on India’s roads is being witnessed, with unskilled youth taking to the wheels of high powered cars. These drivers have no road sense, or regard for the rights of various classes of road users. The Government has generally withdrawn, abdicating its role in the areas of construction infrastructure and enforcement. 

It is no wonder that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways at the Centre has estimated the number of people killed annually in India’s roads at 100,000 plus. The Indian Institute of Technology Delhi’s Transportration Research and Injury Prevention Programme has estimated that injuries in India are grossly underreported. According to its researched figures, the number of injuries is about 15 times the number of death. That means 1.5 million Indians grievously wounded in each year, with consequences for economic productivity, societal well-being and familial peace and happiness.

It is a monumental shame.

Can Tata’s Nano win big ?

Tata’s people’s car, the Nano, has generated the kind of excitement seen in the past only when the original people’s car concept was outlined by Sanjay Gandhi, and much later, delivered by Maruti-Suzuki.

If looks can win, the Tata Nano is certainly a design triumph. For a jaded country, one that grew used to the profile of two or three cars before the advent of full blown motorisation, the “low cost” car in the publicity pictures put up by Tata Motors are a sight for sore eyes. After all, this is the country of automotive clones such as Ambassadors, Fiats (then Premier Padminis), Standard Pennants and Heralds, that chugged on for decades under Hindustan Motors and Fiat, later Premier Auto, not to mention the arthritic Standard Motors down South.

Here are some views of the new Tata offering standard model which is the good news (the bad news can come later):

 Here is the so-called luxury version which is not part of the mainstream discussion. It reportedly features air-conditioning and some bells and whistles.

It is not often that one comes across such a focus on design, in a product for the masses. One look at our public facilities designed by the Government, or at its behest, starting with buses and trains, and the point becomes clear.

As I have had occasion to point out earlier, there are many unanswered questions about the idea of a people’s car for the majority of middle class families who can make a down payment of about Rs.20,000 and pay a mortgage on a car for a few years.

The point about social disruption because of the fundamental concept of such a car has been discussed before. It is seemingly progressive that a car can replace the millions of two wheelers that many families depend upon for basic mobility, carrying the entire family on a set of two wheels. But it is a no-brainer that two wheels occupy less space, while they may not be optimal for family transport. Hence, residential buildings hosting 20 or 30 two-wheelers cannot accommodate as many people’s cars.

Second, as with historical European cities, the roads in India’s cities and towns were not built with the idea of the automobile, much less the personal car. Hence, as motorisation progresses, aided by cheaper cars from Tata, Renault-Nissan, Suzuki and probably others, there will be massive disruption of existing mobility. The call for “road widening” has already grown shrill in the metros, which is shorthand for removal of walking spaces and spreading the macadam from end-to-end. (There was even a justification of the practice by M.K.Stalin, then Mayor of Chennai and now Rural Development Minister of the State of Tamil Nadu in India. Read that report in The Hindu here).

This is a phenomenon that must be fought tooth and nail, because it is a false solution, and a measure that affects the rights of many car-less people, and those who are quite simply ethically motivated to avoid car use. It also has serious implications for safety on the roads.

Sadly, even that usurpation of pedestrians’ space is not going to solve the problem. The marginal efficiency of the car is progressively going to decline in the near future; emission concerns in their totality, linked to scientific concerns on climate change will further subtract from the value of the automobile as we know it today.

It is not difficult to imagine, under such circumstances, that Governments will move to the next stage of the process, which is to place curbs on automobile use. Even if political expediency prevents the government from directly taxing cars, they will inevitably introduce taxes on car use. Motor Vehicle taxes are one option. Sophisticated congestion charging schemes are another, although given the level of civic and technological intelligence among politicians, bureaucrats and planners in the Indian environment, that is more a long-term possibility than an immediate one.

An urban parking facility sector is also likely to mature in the environment of mass produced autos. So is an intermediate taxi sector, currently built around Tata’s Indica car. It would be in the interest of passengers without car ownership to create a strong taxi car framework in the metros, with sound laws and enforcement. The motivation to own a car will then be secondary to the convenience of being able to hire one at will, at sane fares (unlike the current anarchic autorickshaw operations in cities such as Chennai).

Lastly, it may dampen the spirit, but it remains a moot point whether a people’s car, even one involving low maintenance, with huge numbers can be serviced without extensive infrastructure. The existing facilities are patchy and in the case of Tata Motors, below par as reflected in the ratings of customer satisfaction. That means a lot more work to shore up quality — will that be cheap too?

The tailpiece should perhaps touch on the state of the Transport bureaucracy, which has been deliberately kept small to increase the pressure on vehicle owners. There are not as many RTOs, vehicle inspectors and field staff in the department as an explosion in vehicular population demands. So the question to be asked is, what will the quantum of bribes be for the RTOs, to register the people’s car ? At present, there is a cosy relationship between dealers and RTOs, with the bribes collected up-front from the customer at the showroom and paid discreetly to the transport departments. Surely, the bribe must also be scaled down for the people’s car to match its price?

Tata’s small car: Pachauri vs. Mashelkar

The social ideology of the motor car, an essay attributed to Andre Gorz, says that it can work only as a luxury. It is akin to owning a part of the beach. We may all want to own a little of it, but if we all could, then each would have so little that it would be practically useless. The same logic holds good for cars. If all of us had one and decided to use it, none of us can move because there is insufficient space.

As one of India’s better known brands, the Tatas apparently want to disprove that logic. They appear to be first in the race to come up with a one lakh rupee car, which will, as its proponents say, achieve socialistic ownership of what has always been viewed as a luxury. Indeed, in some remote parts of Tamil Nadu, it is referred to as “pleasure” and not car.

But why is the automobile industry in such deep love with India (and China)? It is not difficult to see that the heyday of the car as the means to individual escape is over. The screws are turning fast in the advanced markets for low-efficiency, carbon-spewing vehicles just as the growth rate for car sales has turned flaccid due to Energy Dysfunction.

What better place to peddle the fading mystique of cars than in the populous, newly prosperous markets such as ‘Bharat’?

But Dr. Rajendra K Pachauri, who received the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has tried to sober down the euphoria. He must be commended for bluntly describing the one lakh rupee car as a threat to the environment. It is likely that his view will be dismissed by the powerful lobbies associated with cars, fossil fuels and road builders. The most likely defence is going to be philosophical: it brings mobility to the masses; some may also say that it complies with Euro IV norms, and so why stand in the way?

That kind of logic is at the foundation of comments by Dr. R.A.Mashelkar, the noted CSIR scientist who has consented to formally associate himself with the Tata project.

The one lakh rupee or even Rs.1.5 lakh rupee car bodes ill for social peace. It is bound to affect investments in public transport and improvements to service, as cross subsidy within bus and train services through differentiated offerings will be less viable — there will be less of the paying middle class wanting to take public transport. The clamour for road-building will reach a peak, which is good news for construction companies, but not for the environment. The toll of accidents will rise, and more Indians will be dead or injured and their families left to fend for themselves. Apartment complexes, which lack parking spaces for the majority of residents, will come under greater pressure as people quarrel over space.

There is only one way to handle the emerging mess. Do sell a car for one lakh because that is now a fait accompli. But make it prohibitively expensive to use it. Do a Ken Livingstone and charge a flat fee every time the car is used inside cities (New York is thinking of doing the same thing). That money should go ONLY to fund buses and trains (such as Chennai’s MRTS), modern trams (not the kind running in Kolkata), pedestrian and cycling facilities. Keep building such green infrastructure using congestion charging money. That is the only equitable and socialistic way to offer mobility choices.