Traffic Jams – Is there a solution in sight?

By Neeraj Mahajan

• The world's longest traffic jam between Paris and Lyon involved 18 million cars over 176 kilometers in 1980.
• São Paulo, Brazil-- the world's seventh largest city was the scene of a 265-kilometre-long traffic jam in 2008. São Paulo is today home to one of the largest helicopter fleets in the world- where those who can afford prefer to fly to avoid the jams, but for how long. A 295 km long traffic jam in Sao Paulo affecting over 35% of the city's roads set a new record for bad traffic. 
• A 100 km long traffic jam on Beijing highway lasted over ten days in August 2010. Thousands of cars and trucks piled up on the National Expressway 100, also known as G110- a major route from Beijing to Zhangjiakou. Stranded drivers played chess on cars.
• Dhaka – the capital of Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, badly affected by traffic jam. Faulty traffic signals, narrow roads and overtaking leads to lengthy traffic jams and cause of air and noise pollution. 
• Moscow, Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro, Warsaw, Palermo, Marseille, São Paulo, Rome, Paris and Stockholm rank among the top 10 congested cities. Moscow holds the distinction of the longest daily traffic jams, averaging 2.5 hours – the world average is one hour.
• An average U.S. driver spends 2 weeks per year stuck in traffic.
• In South Africa motorists spend three-and-a-half days a year on congested roads.
• Commuters all over the globe spend around eight working days a year stuck in traffic.

London, New York, Beijing or Sydney -- Traffic jams are a problem for every major city , every country of the world.  Traffic jams, snarls or congestion –call it by whatever name-- is an ugly reality of urban living. No matter which part of the world you live in – this is one reality you may have to face and bear.

Inadequate public transport infrastructure, lack of proper rapid transit systems, nonexistent Mass transit system, poorly maintained highways, bad roads and high population density- are the ingredients in this recipe for disaster. This is a problem which cannot be solved by better traffic management alone. Crux of the problem is the rapid proliferation of private vehicles, while the road surface hasn’t increased proportionately. The result is headache of arriving late for work daily and restrictive flow of traffic- no more than a trickle.

Cars are status symbols throughout the world, everybody wants one. Traffic congestion on road networks cause slower speed, longer journey time and increased queuing. Jams are caused when the demand exceeds the capacity of a road to support it.

Be it New York, Los Angeles or London which developed gradually over many decades, giving officials more time and resources to address the problem, traffic congestion is a relatively recent phenomenon in many of today’s developing cities.

India has a vast 3.3 million km long road network –next only to USA which has a total road network of 6.3 million km. USA itself hasn’t been able to come to terms with the problems of traffic congestion. Los Angeles with all its highways, freeways and routes is among the most terrible metropolis of traffic jams.

Due to rising incomes, proliferation of car loans, growth of the auto industry and low-cost cars – more and more Indians are getting behind the wheel. In the last one decade itself the number of passenger vehicles has gone up and is expected to overtake China the fastest growing car market. At this rate it is only a matter of time when India – already the world's second-most populous country after China may also become the most congested nation.  

At present vehicles in India are distributed somewhat unevenly. Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore with 5% of India's population have 14% of all registered vehicles. Traffic is growing four times faster than the population in six cities-- Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. Delhi alone has as many cars as Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai combined.

Traffic in most countries means - automobiles, buses, trucks, trains, motorcycles, scooters and bicycles. But in India, in addition to this urban transportation includes substantially large number of pedestrians, slow-moving cycles, rickshaws, auto-rickshaws and bullock carts adding to the congestion and chaos.

The last decade has seen 100 fold increase in motorized vehicles, with only a 8 fold increase in road length during the same period.  This notwithstanding temptation of cheap car by the likes of Tata Nano has made nearly 50 million people – till recently moving around on scooters to buy their own car.

Already the public transport systems are overloaded. There is a limit to the additional load that the present road and rail infrastructure can take. According to the Mumbai Traffic Police web between 1951 and 2007 the length of roads in Mumbai doubled but the population increased 5.4 times and numbers of vehicles multiplied 43 times in that period. Recently existing roads are being widened and tens of flyovers are being built in Delhi and Mumbai. But this is no solution as the increase in traffic is way ahead of the infrastructure developed.

Ironically India which is the second largest producer of buses, accounting for 16 percent of world's total bus production has a bus penetration ratio of just 0.4 to six buses per 1000 people. An efficient public transport system holds the key to reduce the traffic on city roads.  

Many cities like Singapore and London have introduced congestion charging schemes to reduce traffic. In London, drivers are charged a fee for entering the Central London zone. The idea is to discourage vehicle owners from making unnecessary journeys and encourage the use of public transport systems. The result is that traffic in central London has gone down by 21 per cent, and traffic speeds by 10%.

Congestion charging brings with it a dual advantage: it reduces traffic on the roads and generates funds for improving alternative systems of transport. Athens and Mexico City have also successfully implemented such schemes.

Only 960,000 kilometers out of India’s total of about 2 million kilometers roads are surfaced while more than 1 million kilometers roads in are the poorly constructed. Although India’s fifty-three National highways carry about 40 percent of the total road traffic, most national highways are just two lanes or even lesser. Apart from being narrow they are also highly congested since quite a large part of India's freight is carried on these highways.

About 25 percent of villages in India still have poor road links. Most of the rural areas in India do not have access to all weather roads and have a tough time during the monsoons.  

Traffic is a big problem in most of the metropolitans cities like Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata which are congested during office hours. This is because of industrialization and the sudden rise in vehicle ownership over the last few years. To overcome this the growing traffic, the government  needs to construct around 15,000 km expressways in the next ten years

Every year though India spends around Rs 20,000-30,000 crore on the road sector, overloading and poor maintenance, is one of the main cause of damage to the roads. About 70 percent of funds meant on maintenance of roads go into payment of labor. A possible solution lies in building concrete roads instead of bituminous roads. Concrete roads are little expensive but beneficial in the long run.

According to the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Government of India, motor vehicles in India have been growing at around 10% during last decade. Vehicle ownership rate, in many big cities including Delhi has crossed 400 per 1000 people. At least 5 metropolitan cities have vehicles excess of 500 per 1000 people. Nearly 35% of the vehicles in the country are plying in metropolitan cities alone, with just 11% of the total population. Delhi, the capital of India, with around 1.4% of Indian population, accounts for nearly 7% of all motor vehicles in the country

Two-wheelers and cars account for over 85% of the vehicle population in most of the metropolitan cities. They account for at least 90% of total vehicles in Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Coimbatore, Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Vadodara, Varanasi, and Vishakhapatnam. Two-wheelers alone account for more than 80% of the total vehicles in Nagpur (84%), Varanasi (84%), Surat (83%), Coimbatore (83%), Madurai (82%), Bhopal (81%), Kanpur (81%), Vadodara (81%), Vishakhapatnam (81%), and Lucknow (80. Two-wheelers and cars together constitute at least 90% of the total vehicles in Ahmedabad (91%), Delhi (90%), Lucknow (93%), and Nagpur (91%) whereas in these cities buses constitute only 1%, 0.7%, 0.3%, and 0.4% respectively.

Cities like Beijing, Mexico City and Johannesburg top the global poll of the worst driving commutes in the world. According to the study, Beijing and Mexico City scored 99 each out of 100 in the commuter pain index to become the top two cities in the world having the worst traffic jams. Chicago is the most congested city in America, according to a study by Carbuzz. Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Houston, and San Francisco rank behind Chicago as the USA’s most congested urban centers.

Bangkok's traffic problem has been getting worse since the government introduced a policy to refund tax for first-time car buyers. This policy has resulted in five million vehicles in a city which can only cope with two million cars. The result is that it takes one hour to travel 50-60 km into Bangkok. In Jakarta life revolves around traffic jams which are a routine throughout the day. Even short distances – say 2km can sometimes take about 30 minutes.

New Delhi also figures among the top 10. A good majority of people feel traffic has worsened in the last three years.

According to an IBM study of 8,192 motorists in 20 cities across the globe traffic snarls are affecting the work, health and well being of the commuters. About 65 per cent people who drive to their offices are completely stressed and have little time for their family, 29 per cent of the people said that traffic jams adversely impacted their performance at work or school.

The congestion in many of today's developing cities is a relatively recent phenomenon, having paralleled the rapid economic growth of those cities during the past decade or two. By contrast, the traffic in places like New York, Los Angeles or London developed gradually over many decades, giving officials more time and resources to address the problem.

To help ease city congestion, inventors are talking about a straddling bus, which will carry passengers in an elevated structure raised enough for cars and trucks to pass underneath it

To combat traffic congestion, mobile telecommunications company Vodafone is talking about “smart” cities where smartphones could streamline everything from planning your route across various transport modes to paying for your groceries.

Tube transport is another possibility. The theory is to use gravity as the driving force to power trains running through an oxygen-free, frictionless tunnel. In theory, a tube through the centre of the earth would allow a gravity train to reach speeds of up to 29 000km/h - which means being able to go anywhere on the planet in less than an hour.

Why aren’t Ants caught in traffic jams?

Have you ever come across an ant caught up in a traffic jam? Does it mean that Ants have been able to solve the problem of traffic jams, something humans haven't? Heave you ever wondered why Cars often get caught in traffic jams but ants don’t? Well the simple answer is that ants help each other to move around their colony much more efficiently. This may understanding alone may be key to effective road traffic management. Dirk Helbing from the Dresden University of Technology in Germany and his team investigated how ants move around their colony. They set up an ant highway with two routes of different widths from the nest to some sugar syrup. As expected the narrower route became congested. But when an ant returning along the congested route to the nest collided with another ant, the returning ant pushed the newcomer onto the other path. However, if the returning ant had enjoyed a trouble-free journey, it did not redirect the newcomer. The researchers created a computer model of more complex ant networks with routes of different lengths. The team found that even though ants being rerouted sometimes took a longer route, they still got to the food quickly and efficiently. If human drivers travelling in opposite directions could pass congestion information to each other in this way, we would all be better off.