Engineering highways to hell
When the Palm Beach Road first came up in Navi Mumbai a decade back we thought India had finally arrived. Here was a road that was attempting to meet international standards. The Bombay Pune expressway too added to this confidence. Even if we didn’t expect any dramatic overnight changes, we expected our highways and byways to improve on an incremental basis.
The erstwhile PM Vajpayee’s dream Golden Quadrilateral project, that now connects most of India’s metros, kept this hope alive.
Turbhe - Airoli Highway
But now whenever I use the relatively new Turbhe to Airoli highway I wonder what the architects and engineers of this project were thinking when they designed this road. When I first came across this route, I was quite delighted with the idea of a road that would allow me the joy of effortless, pothole free and smooth drive for at least 15 Kms.
When the roadwork finally was completed, and I got the opportunity to use the road I was thoroughly disappointed. It is pothole free. It had better be, considering most sections are less than a year old. But effortless and smooth, definitely a big NO! Even if they had just copied the Palm Beach Road, things would have been 10 times better. We don’t even need to sit and break our head over new technology and design.
Learn to Copy
The developed nations and even our neighbor China have already spent millions developing this technology. It is available to us on a platter. Why can’t we just copy the damn technology? Our musicians and cinema makers have been doing that for decades despite copyright issues. There is no IP on road technology as far as I know. The UK government offers a 15 volume Design Manual for Roads and Bridges. If it is anywhere similar to the UK government's ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) manual that offers best-practices for IT service management then it can be accepted as a global standard and leveraged by us.
At the very least, our designers need to understand that building a road is not just about clearing a straight path and pouring tar or concrete. Width, alignment, traffic flow, junctions, traffic volume are all aspects that need to be considered before even laying the groundwork.
An article I read many years back provides a classic example of how inept we are in this matter. Can’t remember the details but the gist was that earlier India used to build roads in Nepal and now the Nepalese have recruited China as well. According to that article, (btw, an Indian wrote the article so it is not Chinese propaganda) the possibility of meeting with an accident on the roads constructed by India was much higher as compared to the Chinese ones.
Reason? In a mountainous country like Nepal, the roads tend to be tortuous. The Chinese built roads with sweeping curves and longer sight distances that made driving on these roads effortless and safer. Anyone who has been to China will vouch for the quality of their roads.
On the other hand, our roads are famous for its tight corners and lack of visibility into what lies ahead. We don’t have to go as far as Nepal to experience this. Metropolitan Mumbai itself is a good example. In our own cities, the danger this poses is compounded by the lack of driver discipline. It’s a ripple effect. The indiscipline of a few combined with bad roads aggravate the drivers who try to abide by the rules. This then leads to them engaging in road rage, which then provokes the other drivers, and soon you sense impending doom.
The Turbhe Airoli road is a classic case in point. Bad design, numerous painful speed-breakers, undisciplined novice drivers, countless mini junctions along the way where somebody from the opposite direction might suddenly decide to make a u-turn, lack of visibility, all adds up to multiple drivers itching to murder someone. Since the road is new, we can still take corrective actions. But we being what we are I very much doubt that.
The erstwhile PM Vajpayee’s dream Golden Quadrilateral project, that now connects most of India’s metros, kept this hope alive.
Turbhe - Airoli Highway
But now whenever I use the relatively new Turbhe to Airoli highway I wonder what the architects and engineers of this project were thinking when they designed this road. When I first came across this route, I was quite delighted with the idea of a road that would allow me the joy of effortless, pothole free and smooth drive for at least 15 Kms.
When the roadwork finally was completed, and I got the opportunity to use the road I was thoroughly disappointed. It is pothole free. It had better be, considering most sections are less than a year old. But effortless and smooth, definitely a big NO! Even if they had just copied the Palm Beach Road, things would have been 10 times better. We don’t even need to sit and break our head over new technology and design.
Learn to Copy
The developed nations and even our neighbor China have already spent millions developing this technology. It is available to us on a platter. Why can’t we just copy the damn technology? Our musicians and cinema makers have been doing that for decades despite copyright issues. There is no IP on road technology as far as I know. The UK government offers a 15 volume Design Manual for Roads and Bridges. If it is anywhere similar to the UK government's ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) manual that offers best-practices for IT service management then it can be accepted as a global standard and leveraged by us.
At the very least, our designers need to understand that building a road is not just about clearing a straight path and pouring tar or concrete. Width, alignment, traffic flow, junctions, traffic volume are all aspects that need to be considered before even laying the groundwork.
An article I read many years back provides a classic example of how inept we are in this matter. Can’t remember the details but the gist was that earlier India used to build roads in Nepal and now the Nepalese have recruited China as well. According to that article, (btw, an Indian wrote the article so it is not Chinese propaganda) the possibility of meeting with an accident on the roads constructed by India was much higher as compared to the Chinese ones.
Reason? In a mountainous country like Nepal, the roads tend to be tortuous. The Chinese built roads with sweeping curves and longer sight distances that made driving on these roads effortless and safer. Anyone who has been to China will vouch for the quality of their roads.
On the other hand, our roads are famous for its tight corners and lack of visibility into what lies ahead. We don’t have to go as far as Nepal to experience this. Metropolitan Mumbai itself is a good example. In our own cities, the danger this poses is compounded by the lack of driver discipline. It’s a ripple effect. The indiscipline of a few combined with bad roads aggravate the drivers who try to abide by the rules. This then leads to them engaging in road rage, which then provokes the other drivers, and soon you sense impending doom.
The Turbhe Airoli road is a classic case in point. Bad design, numerous painful speed-breakers, undisciplined novice drivers, countless mini junctions along the way where somebody from the opposite direction might suddenly decide to make a u-turn, lack of visibility, all adds up to multiple drivers itching to murder someone. Since the road is new, we can still take corrective actions. But we being what we are I very much doubt that.
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