A cynical solution for Bombay's traffic woes

I am pondering over a solution for Bombay's traffic woes.

The footpaths of Bombay are proportionally shared between the illegal migrants to our city and the illegal hawkers.This leaves pedestrians no place to walk, our squatter and hawker friends having taken over most part of the road.

We do not believe in the concept of parking lots, since we have to pay and park.So we have taxi's, autorickshaw's, private cars jostling for parking space on every motorable road, preferably near a busy commercial or resedential area, leading to our way of life - Traffic Jams.

Great.

So we create flyovers and elevated roads for vehicular traffic.
The roads are then left for the pedestrians.
Foothpaths are renamed to hawkpaths, as it is we do not have them.

No traffic jams till the hawkers are allowed to invade the elevated roads and flyovers.Happy Driving (till then)in Bombay.

Comments

Lahore - the border crossover

For as long as I have had the travel bug in me, I have wanted to visit Pakistan and specifically go to Lahore. I remember making a life list a couple of years ago and Pakistan figured top on the list of places I wanted to visit. I am asked by many - 'Why Pakistan?' - considering the strained relationship between our countries. I have the answer in two parts for them. a) My maternal grandparents hail from Lahore. As a kid, I remember spending almost every summer and winter break in Kanpur, where my maternal family shifted after the partition, and being nurtured with stories of Lahore, it's splendour and their life and times there. I was brain tattooed with Lahore and its stories. b) We are culturally akin. [I am a Punjabi] We speak the same language, have similar tastes in dress and food. We share a common bond of folk, sufi poetry and music - composed and sung in the same ragas across both the borders. And we share the same history. Punjab for the uninitiated is ...

Building Bridges

It’s been rather warm and sultry, rather very dull and uninspiring weather this past month and I stare at the sky for inspiration. It sure is mildly cloudy, few gravid with rain but they seem to have no intent of showering their blessings on us. I also receive a message from my friend, an avid sailor, halfway around the globe from Austin, Texas that there has been no rain for some time and the lake levels are depleting. Global warming sure is a reality and a tough one that needs to be addressed and understood soon by all of us. It is predicted that by the year 2030, the most precious commodity on planet earth would be clean water – not diamonds, nor gold, nor oil. My imagination goes haywire when I hear this. Many of us read and are led to believe that certain power hungry countries wage wars for oil, imagine waging war for drinking water. I shudder at the sheer thought and reach for my glass of water Back home, there is a lot of jubilation in the air on a new landmark bridge a...

Solo in Goa - the planning

I never realized that my maiden solo sojourn would spark off a spate of justifications I would have to make to both my family and friends. Having had spoken to my wife, I thought I had rested any emanating objections. But this was not to be so. After dinner, two days before my trip, I dropped into my parent’s room to post them on my solo holiday. Happy noticing an unusual from the routine gesture of me dropping by for a chat, Karisma Kapoor nee Kapur and her Karishma were banished to a muted existence for the while. Like an actor waiting backstage for a cue for his entry on stage, I waited for a commercial to interrupt Karisma Kapoors small screen prowess. Preempting one, I quickly cleared my throat and announced, " I am going for a couple of days to Goa". Realising that this sounded like one of my regular information to them of my usual business tours – I then added for attracting the right attention. "Alone. I am going alone for a holiday without Sarika". In ...

Orderly Disorder

Search This Blog