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If you are complaining about Bangalore’s traffic, sitting smugly in your air-conditioned car, it’s time you tried car-pooling, writes AYESHA MATTHAN
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PHOTO: MURALI KUMAR K.
TOGETHERNESS ON WHEELS Car-pooling spells many advantages — safety, new friends, cleaner air, less traffic on smoggy roads
This morning, if you are about to slip into your roomy eight-seater car, roll up your windows, switch on the a/c and music, blare your horns mercilessly, sigh in exasperation at the traffic jams and grumble that there are too many buses or autos clog
ging the roads, take a look around.
If all the four cars or bikes with single drivers around you, car-pool with you, think how much more space there would be, how much faster you’ll get to work and yes, how much more petrol you’ll be saving for future years. And, not forgetting, how much cleaner the air you breathe will be.
I remember as a school-girl, my mother would drive my sister, me, and our neighbour’s children in a rickety but rock-solid Fiat every morning to school that was 10 km away. It was a tad inconvenient — those children were never on time, and their driver would take frequent days off which meant that my driver-mother would have to do double-shifts. But, with no school buses or direct public transport, it worked out to be very reasonable despite all the pinches.
It’s not like anyone in Bangalore has not made an effort. Navaratan Kataria, an electrical engineer who works in an IT company is not your regular, use-and-throw, fast-spending IT professional. He initiated a car-pooling group on Yahoo ( carpool-bangalore@yahoogroups.com) seven years ago. All the people registered on this group have had their identity verified with the companies they work in, and work out transportation costs before they start. He feels car-pooling is a solution to congested roads as “infrastructural growth cannot keep up with population. So by the time an expensive flyover is built in three years, it becomes obsolete.”
One of the reasons people do not take the initiative to travel together Kataria feels is they seem to be too shy to network, thinking: “How can I go and ask?” But when they do, they wonder why they hadn’t asked earlier and dismiss fears about “what her husband will think”. It becomes a status issue as Lalitha Kamath of CASUMM (Collaborative for the Advancement of the Study of Urbanism through Mixed Media) feels. “Certainly our social interaction has reduced in the last 10 years and people find it tedious or lowering one’s social status to drive with someone.”
Manika Ghosh, who heads the psychology department at Maharani’s Arts and Science College says, “Bangalore has never had a calamity which forced people to come together and work things for a cause. The new middle-class does not think of the difficulties they create by buying new cars, for they have too much money to dispose and don’t think of the future.” Here’s a different example. Mukta Potharaju, who works for an IT firm, has been car-pooling for a year with her boss. She says: “Even though I may not get to listen to my music or leave when I want, I feel that there is still one car less on the road.” Kalpana K. also car-pools with three colleagues from Cunningham Road to Marathahalli and back everyday. She says, “We save on money and energy and have a great time car-pooling together.”
Women find the added advantage of safety in car-pooling at lonely hours. Kataria said there was a woman who used to travel by taxi regularly from R.T. Nagar to her office on Banerghatta Road.
Upon realising she had two neighbours going to the same side of town, they decided to car-pool. Traffic jams and not getting to work on time? Kataria feels that the solution to traffic woes lie in car-pooling lanes, toll taxes, higher parking fees for single-driver cars and better parking areas for car-pooling vehicles. But Lalitha Kamath feels it won’t work. “Even though the government has not initiated measures for car-pooling, they will have to contend with petrol and automobile lobbies who are against rules like toll taxes, parking fees and the like.”
But District Commissioner of Police (Traffic-Bangalore East), Madhukar Shetty, says: “We have not implemented car-pooling incentives, but dedicated lanes are impossible because of the sheer density of traffic.”
Executive Trustee, Kathyayini Chamaraj of CIVIC (Citizen’s Voluntary Initiative for the City) says: “The transport department needs to get film-stars to endorse public transport, cycling and walking.”
She and Kamath lament, “But to our educated people, who don’t think twice before throwing garbage on the road, I wonder if mere education will help. Fees, higher taxes and penalties are the only things they will understand and which that will change their behaviour.”
But does one learn from car-pooling? Kataria says, “Not only does car-pooling make one a disciplined person in time-management, but also, enables social networking for the new lonely Bangalorean who wants to make friends.”
SOME STATS
Bangalore in 2006:
For every bus, there were 12 cars and 53 two-wheelers
For every auto, there were 5 cars and 23 two-wheelers
(Source: RTO)
Get car de-addicted:
www.commuteeasy.com
www.worldcarfree.net
www.autoholics.org
www.carbusters.org
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