Mangalore crumbling under its own weight?

By M.Raghuram

MANGALORE, JUNE 30. Mangalore, which is often compared to some of the rapidly developing cities in the country by statisticians, is crumbling under its own weight. The most glaring among the several other inadequacies, vehicular traffic appears to be going out of control in the city.

By nature, Mangalore has been a highly unplanned city. The real development of Mangalore started sometime in the late 70s when the city started assuming importance in trade and commerce following the commissioning of the New Mangalore Port and Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilizers.

However, basic infrastructure, particularly roads, have remained more or less the same barring some trunk roads within the city widened during the term of Mr. Bharatlal Meena as the Deputy Commissioner.

Traffic in the meanwhile has grown multifold to reach a density that is next only to that of Bangalore Urban District. The narrow roads and the crowded bylanes have become a nemesis of drivers as every one of them nudge and wriggle through giving least scope for any pedestrian movement.

According to the RTO figures, the city has 1.6 lakh motor vehicles belonging to all categories and has an annual growth rate of 12 per cent which is one of the largest in the country.

In this scenario it is traffic regulations that get the maximum beating with only a handful of traffic policemen posted in the city. There are 95 policemen to cover over 115 sq km of the city areas. Some areas such as Hampankatta, Central Market, State Bank, Mallikatta, Bundar and others get the maximum police service, while places such as Kadri, Urva, Ashoknagar and other sparsely populated areas get a raw deal.

These are the places where most traffic offences take place, especially by the city bus drivers who hoodwink police and mount pressure on other road users.

The city bus services have assumed a role of rogues on the road. They have unlimited freedom to speed without being booked, use shrill horns even at no-horn zones and get away with it and abuse passengers and bully them without being penalised by police or the RTO. These buses are fitted with horns that are suitable for use by locomotives (120 db) but the RTO does not seem to be alarmed by it.

Once in a year they remove the horns of a handful of vehicles as part of their annual ritual. Why they want such violent horns inside the city? When asked, a bus owner, Mr. Vasanth Karkera, said the competition between companies was so intense in Mangalore that drivers would have to transport passengers in short time and only with the help of a shrill horn they could drive through the traffic.

The Indian Motor Vehicles Act prohibits the use of shrill horns in city limits, but in Mangalore both police and the RTO seem to have forgotten this. There is feeling among other road users that shrill horns are being used by the bus drivers only to chase them out of their (bus drivers) way.

Other offences that occur day-to-day, include parking on roads (State Bank and Lady Goshen area), overspeeding and rash driving (even in school zones), unscheduled stopping, dishonouring passes issued to students, being discourteous to the elderly, women and children, playing tapes and jumping signals. But hardly any of these offences catch the eyes of the traffic police and seldom evokes any action from the RTO.

When contacted, the RTO sources on conditions of anonymity said that for some unknown reasons bus drivers are given some freedom to use shrill horns and allowed to carry on even when they have apparently committed offences.

They held the Government responsible for the changed licencse policy which had increased the number of buses plying in Mangalore and on many routes bus service had become superfluous.

Considering the fact that Mangalore's roads cannot be anymore widened people feel it is better to regulate the speed of buses and bring some order in the traffic movement.

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Section  : Southern States
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