Try asking a friend a simple question: “Caught in a traffic jam in Delhi recently?” You will hear endless stories of agonising hours spent in travelling a few hundred metres to a few km, of roads in constant need of repair, whether it is a small matter of pavement stones being improved or month long “Work In Progress” mega jobs.
While these are usual inconveniences that the capital faces, last week saw an extraordinary spike in traffic jams. That’s because the civic authorities decided to take up the renovation of Connaught Place, relaying of bitumen on flyovers, widening of roads and improvement of pavements all more or less simultaneously in order to meet deadlines for the ensuing Commonwealth Games.
But what is amazing is that heaps of gravel, sand, rubble, pre-cast cobbled bricks, water tanks, bitumen heaters, tools and tackles and the mandatory “inconvenience regretted” boards occupy half the road that needs repair. The already narrow two lane road thus turns into a single lane adding to chaos, frustrations and frayed tempers.
There is no sense of urgency to complete these projects in double quick time, nor concern for the comfort of ordinary citizens. On roads where “work is in progress”, the civic authorities neither make the road nor the pavement available for the citizens quickly.
Harrowing tales like these give little confidence that the engineers at the civic authorities executing these projects have heard of project management techniques leave alone deploying them. It looks like these obstructions are the only evidence that the civic authorities want to share with the citizens that they are on the job.
It is painful to see the amazingly slow pace at which the work progresses. Though private contractors are engaged, they seem to be on the job for less than 4-6 hours a day and blockages continue through the remaining 18-20 hours.
In this day and age of 24/7 surely we need to crunch the down time to the barest minimum. Let all road works get undertaken at night and continue non-stop until completed.
Look at the flyovers inaugurated with great fanfare. The first of the three flyovers connecting the airport with Nehru Place opened in mid August. But the work on the removal of scaffoldings, completion of slip roads, pavements, relaying of the roads and landscaping is merrily carrying on even after five months. There is silence on how long it will take to get completed. Don’t the citizens have a right to know?
Building infrastructure is not about allocating funds for concrete, gravel and steel. Nor is building infrastructure about causing unending misery to people. Building infrastructure is about communicating and engaging with concerned consumers.
As a consumer of Brand Delhi, we want the civic authorities to proactively share the plan with us well before the roads are dug up. Not after a 100-foot-wide road is shrunk to 30 feet without as much as a by your leave, all because they plan to give us a better future.
It is about proposing alternative routes and options, sharing with the consumer in big and bold readable signs at multiple locations that a work site is a few km ahead. It is about reviewing the actual traffic patterns and re-working some of those based on ground realities. It is also about communicating deadlines and time frames for the job completion. It is about re-assuring the public that that the road will open on a certain committed day and time.
The citizens need to know about the nearest parking lot, drinking water and civic amenities. In case half the city needs to work at night to smoothen out the traffic during the Commonwealth Games, we need to be privy to those plans now. If the authorities do not share these details with the citizens well in advance, we can only expect bigger and longer traffic jams when the Commonwealth Games are held about 250 days from now.
