ITDP’s parking expert – Michael Kordonsky was in Chennai recently to conduct a day long seminar on parking. it was a run-through on his observations of many cities in the west. it was good to hear from so many around the table.

Co-incidentally at City Connect Foundation we are now working on a parking policy document with the help of CPPR. the study focuses on next set of policy changes that need to be put in place for a city like chennai to address the issue where clearly the demand is way above the supply.

Following article by Mr GRK Reddy, CMD of Marg Group appeared in Times of India. Mr Reddy is member of the Executive Committee of Chennai City Connect.

Tier 2 cities are fast progressing to be 2 million population cities leading to ever increasing urbanization issues like hygiene, pollution and traffic snarls.” says Mr GRK Reddy, CMD Marg Based on urbanization trends, India will require at-least 300 new cities with a minimum population of a million each. These will come in the form of existing city upgrades as well as new city development, leading to economies of scale and 30% lesser energy consumption. This is a sign of things to come.

For more from this article published in the Times of India click here

Following article by Mr Gopal Srinivasan, CMD of TVS Capital Funds appeared in Times of India, 21 December, 2010. Mr Gopal Srinivasan is member of the Executive Committee of Chennai City Connect.

CITIZEN CHENNAI - IT IS TIME TO DREAM GLOBAL, PLAN LOCAL
Taking stock of the year gone by, prominent citizens will write for TOI to present a fresh agenda for 2011. The first in a series of year-enders has a venture capitalist unveiling a policy framework for Chennai
G O PA L S R I N I VA SA N

To paraphrase CK Prahalad as he articulated Vision for India@75, aspiration must always exceed present resources. In other words, the vision must be a big stretch, not obvious how it will be attained. Let this be the first principle for aspiring Chennai.
When some of us industry leaders initiated Chennai City Connect (CCC), our objective was to help build capacity of urban governance institutions to deliver great quality of life to Chennai’s citizens. This aspiration should be bold enough to be not constrained within current reality and geographic boundaries. Chennai has always been a magnet for creative and hardworking talent. It has also had a conducive urban environment to nurture this, be it industry, culture or arts.
For industry and commerce to flourish, which in turn fuels prosperity and resources for a flourishing civic life, we need the best and the brightest. In a highly competitive world, this means offering employees a city that is synonymous with quality of life.
While we renew our central business districts and cultural spaces within the city, let us start a planned expansion of our boundaries. In the suburbs of Chennai, let us plan and build a network of roads with world class facilities, parking management, and open public spaces. We should also plan for adequate space for hospitals, schools and other civic services, not to mention solid waste management, sewerage and water supply. In this rapidly urbanising environment we cannot underestimate the impact of the city on the region and vice versa. Chennai needs a Regional Plan Authority and related institutional structures to ensure sustainable regional expansion of our city. At the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) we coined a catchy phrase-MAP-Marakkanam, Arakkonam, Pulicat—to help visualise this. Such a regional authority would logically encompass active participation of stakeholders from the various urban and rural entities. Such a plan should catalyse protection of regional water bodies, forests and other gifts of nature while further increasing the share of protected open spaces for future generations.
All said and done, even industrial towns like Sriperumbudur are about people and life. Women and men toil so as to create a better future for their children. Hence, let us plan to transform the Sriperumbudurs’ into world class self-contained urban spaces with excellent and affordable housing for all its inhabitants, public transportation and other urban amenities around a vibrant Chennai, the hub. We will have to borrow processes and know-how from across the world. Let us remind ourselves of Prahalad’s advice to summon the boldness to innovate and create the ‘next practices’ in city planning and urban governance.

Not to mention public toilets, trees and not to forget, cleanliness. In cities like Chennai this also means well designed auto and share auto pick up and drop off. Well it is easier to illustrate all this with colour pics and a good example from Shanghai.

Imagine walking out of this Shanghai Metro station. Note the police guys at the entrance. I saw them helping someone with directions too. Most importantly, the place is safe and clean. Many cities that fell apart, like New York in the 80s, did not pay enough attention to this. Subways were scary. Interestingly, solution to the revival of NY was born around the subway and had to do with feeling safe in and around the subway. (Google for Broken Window Theory in Criminology and Policing, James Q Wilson, Kellering).

The station opens into a clean and well kept public space. Take a few steps and you reach a very well designed and informative bus stop. Lots of mature trees to provide all the shade you need. No need to stand on the road like cattle for a bus.

Notice the well designed and engineered service lane for the bus. Bus driver does not have to struggle to get into the lane. Also passengers don’t have to be dropped off in the middle of the road. Further bus and Metro passengers can comfortably wait on wide islands before stepping onto the zebra crossing.

What is not shown in the photos are the footpaths, constructed with utmost care and thought, in all directions around this and all other Metro stations. You could be working or visiting any of the buildings around the stations, like hundreds of thousands of Shanghai citizens do, and you can walk to and from those buildings using these wide, clean footpaths.

Now imagine really bad footpaths around this Metro stations. Add some really pathetic bus stops too. It wouldn’t matter how wonderful the Metro or the BRTS is. Or how well done the seats in the Metro are. (Compare these photos with the situation around any Chennai MRTS stations and you get my point).

To learn more about Public Space and Public Life check out the three amazing groups of people who are working in Chennai with us.

Institute for Transportation and Development Policy
Gehl Architects
OTC Limited

The category of this post should be, I guess, Shaming Oneself Into Doing Something (SOIDS).

The road shown in the photos can’t be any wider than Anna Salai, Poonamallee Road or Jawaharlal Nehru Road (Inner Ring Road). Peak hour number of vehicles seemed similar to what we have in Chennai on comparable roads.

(Note the same road could be refined further. Very importantly, in other parts of Guangzhou, they have one of the biggest and most frequent Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) in the world, with dedicated lanes and advanced systems dedicated just for BRTS buses. Note putting buses and stops in service lanes slows them down which reduce the effectiveness of public transport. Hence we should insist on a full-fledged, gold standard BRTS in Chennai.)

The photos clearly show how easily they have segregated faster vehicles from slow moving vehicles, bus stops, footpath, commuter drop off by taxis and so on. Note the trees in the “middle” of the road. This is to provide physical barrier and more importantly, provide shade to slower moving commuters like cyclists.

One obvious benefit of service lanes is that it disciplines drivers coming in and out of buildings. They can’t just merge into fast traffic, usually perpendicular to the traffic. They have to go on the service lanes and merge only at the right location provided for merging. Perpendicular merging, or merging where ever one wants, adds to the chaos since this forces oncoming traffic to swerve away from the merging vehicle. Imaging when this happens thousands of time in a given stretch. Clearly this drastically reduces the efficiency of the road.

Look at the size of the footpaths. Now, are the Chinese fools to “waste” so much space for pedestrians? I guess not. By segregating fast moving traffic, they are able to manage them with just two lanes. Of course they have designed all other junctions and lanes, before and after what is shown above, well. This ensures that the fast moving traffic can move without colliding with people and slow vehicles, but all this with just two lanes.

Can we imagine our grandparents and elderly citizens walking on our footpath like the couple in the pic above?

Amazing what they have done with their bus stops. Simple but plenty of space. Also, plenty of trees around to provide shade. By the look of the trees, they have been deliberately planted. Not planted by the British or their ancient forefathers. More on this in future blog posts.

Like our considerate MTC drivers (and I say this respect and not sarcasm) looks like Guangzhou bus drivers also drop off their passengers at locations that are not formal bus stops. This is fine, in fact great, in a service lane. Sometimes when bus stops are too far apart, why not drop off passengers where it is convenient for them?

Now there could be an observation that there are hardly any two wheelers in the photo. Also the objection that, in Chennai, two wheelers would ride fast and rash in the service lanes. In fact the observation is correct. And here is where the authorities of Guangzhou have acted foolishly and in a high handed manner. By banning two wheelers from this and many other roads. Someone described this as fascist – banning two wheelers but not cars. I guess the poor in Communist China drive cars and not two wheelers.

Imagine service lanes in Chennai. What do you think an average bike rider would do? Would he prefer to go in the fast lanes or be stuck behind the bus at bus stops, behind some cycle, etc. in the service lanes? Comparable example would be the footpaths of Kottupuram Road, which is pretty wide. Two wheelers climb onto the footpath only when the road is clogged. Not when it is open. So designing the fast lanes properly like what the Chinese have done is important.

Veterans of Chennai planning/traffic/transportation bureaucracies often mention that the concept of service lanes is not new. That they had proposed this decades ago. One pathetic attempt, an excuse of a service lane, is around LIC on Anna Salai. Compare that with the one from Guangzhou.

Sorry for the tone of this post. I recently heard some sad excuses for why service lanes are not possible on Anna Salai. Bizarre explanations and the usual reasoning – X cannot be done in Chennai because Chennai is unique. Or X cannot be done in Chennai (India) because Chennaites (Indians) don’t have Y (Y stands for discipline, morals, ethics, awareness … take your pick). Hence this post.

Can there be simple service lanes in Chennai? You be the judge.

Learn more about service lanes and other road design templates from ITDP’s Street Development Manual.

Hope this would be the start of some important steps to arrest the shrinkage of the marsh and reclaim the lands now being encroached and being used to dump garbage. Current rate at which the marsh area is shrinking is alarming.  For more on this please read a very good report put together by Ms Jayashree V of Care Earth about the delicate ecology of this area.

Some of us have gotten so used to waiting at Anna Flyover that we failed to see an obvious simple design modification that would have a huge impact in this intersection. All credits to Mark, for his elegant design, the plans are already submitted to the Corporation, Highways and the Traffic Police and they are in the process of implementing it soon.

The Highways Department will submit a detailed proposal to the Government of Tamil Nadu for consideration.

The challenges and the constraints that Mark had during the course of this design; Statue! Median! Embassy! etc… is probably worth mentioning in a separate blog!

Here is a presentation to give you an idea of what he came up with:

The long-term solution, at this stage is only for illustration.

A snapshot of what is being suggested: By removing the round-about, and making minor changes to the median alignment, the design suggests that 2 right turn movement can happen simultaneously.  The Nungambakkam High Road traffic that moves into Teynampet direction and the Cathedral Road traffic that moves into Anna Salai can happen simultaneously.

About the Transport Consultant

The Lead consultant for this project is Mark Selvaraj who heads LandTech Engineers Pvt Ltd.

Tidel Park: Rs 246000 / day
Teynampet Junction: Rs 213000/ day
Chetpet Junction: Rs 283000 / day
Velachery Junction: Rs 183000 / day

If we are able to get the loss of various intersections, we might just be able to prioritize which corridor to work on first! As part of the project, we are trying to reduce the wait time at this intersection.

how we calculated it?

cost model since there are many models available to compute the intersection delay cost depending on the country and the level of service, we adopted a more simple approach and also the most conservative! (loss valuation at the minimum compared to other models)
since the study is for an intersection and not a grid at this stage, we have avoided taking queue length, instead we have taken the vehicle crossing in the signal time. the assumption also being made that the vehicles assuming 30 cars that crossed the signal actually waited at the signal! instead of being the lucky few who get the drive by! so we are adding a downward scaling factor so that we we average out the number of vehicles waiting constantly. subsequently we have taken the red signal time and taken the actual number of vehicles waiting. once the vehicle numbers are arrived, it is just multiplied by the signal time and loss/sec and number of cycles/ hour to arrive at the hourly loss.

variables taken and assumed explanation

1. Idling is taken at 1.51 lit/ hour for car (IAA standard for 1200 cc) and 0.75 lit/ hour for 2 wheelers (bajaj website)
2. Bus is calculated as a car! (so the loss actually would be much higher) and likewise autos are calculated as 2-wheelers – the P.C.U conversion was not adopted.
3. Individual movement tracks are considered instead of composite movement. so from GN chetty all the waiting traffic was divided by 3 to get individual direction numbers. (Cathedral + Anna salai + NH Road
4. It is assumed that when a signal gets green, all the vehicles that cross the line waited at the signal Since all vehicles at the red signals waiting at a signal wait for different times, a final factor of 0.75 is added to the final loss value, based on the observation that 75% of the vehicles wait the entire signal period. (Side observed – NH Road -> Cathedral )
5. The car idling usage is for a 1400 cc car.
6. The annual income of people taking this intersection is assumed at INR 4,00,000 (based on the cost of ownership – asset value model) (i.e if a person owns a car of 4 lakhs his annual salalry should be 4 lakhs+ for him to get a loan for that car)
7. The ecology cost is based on the carbon credit valuation
8. The current signal times are based on a single time screen. (we are working to multiple time observation, so more accuracy can be expected in the next few days)
9. Cost of per litre petrol is taken as INR 50.00 (which is already a 2% lesser assumption) – for calculation it is taken that all cars and bikes are petrol based. subsequently, diesel vehicles are taken at the national sales percentage of 45% of all car sales. rest is taken as petrol. (no cng & hybrid for now!) – Cost of Diesel is INR 36.00
10. We have finally added a 0.75 reducing scaling factor, to accommodate the fact that all vehicles don’t wait the entire red signal time. (this is done based on observation on tidel park)
11. We know that the decimals are annoying! but we had to prove we are engineers this side after all
12. Peak time is taken at 6 hours a day (i.e 7-10 AM & 6-9 PM) & off peak traffic is assumed at a straight 50% of the peak time load.
13. All cars are assumed to be A/C cars

a note to the readers: if you think you can use this data to arrive at the intersection loss by any other formula, we would like to hear from you. please get in touch with us.

we are working on other junctions in Chennai. will update in this series.

PS: If you would like to give your ideas/time to such projects, you can always volunteer with CCCF. You can reach us @ (044) 42131289

As you would expect from all such projects on Indian streets there has to be some comedy. To give you the context -

LB footpath will have concrete driveways and ramps in many locations – establishments where vehicles will enter, end of footpaths, etc. In few critical areas EB boxes as in the way and the contractor can’t do his job. There are many chickens and eggs in such projects, and most of the time, the chickens are missing. So you wait for them to arrive and lay the eggs. But when the chicken arrives the eggs are missing and the chickens end up waiting for the egg to arrive. This would be funny if it weren’t frustrating, even for the Corporation officials.

Same applies for the people who are supposed to move and upgrade the traffic lights, remove a dead tree that was right in the middle of the famous traffic island of ours. There are also the private property owners who are supposed to do their part and end up delaying.

Anyway, the EB men arrived on Saturday last. The comedy was that they arrive and start shifting the box to the wrong location. I was in a meeting in another part of town. Our site engineer calls and says, “Saaar! they are putting it in the wrong place”.

Like the lover I mentioned above, we were both excited and irritated, with the news. Excited because finally the EB team had arrived. But turned up only tell you that he/she is now in love with someone else.

After some back and forth, and quick thinking on the part of our site engineer Mr Veeraraghavan, (who has been appointed by the SSPDL and CREDAI, as part of their contribution to the project, both organisations are members of Chennai City Connect), the effort was saved. Luckily and otherwise, EB guys started moving the easiest and the least significant. Luckily, we got the opportunity to explain to them the locations of other boxes in that stretch. Unfortunately, moving the urgent ones will take few more days.

FYI. Corporation team has to write to TNEB requesting the move of the boxes. In this case Corporation is paying TNEB to cost of moving. As you can imagine, lots of public policy/urban street management improvements to be made here. That is, in many other cities of the world, Corporation owns the street. No utility can be placed without its permission and approval of the locations, etc. In Chennai though some some this exists, there is some confusion. From what I know, Corporation in its drive to improve pedestrian facilities in Chennai is paying TNEB the cost of moving these boxes. It is all tax payer money anyway, I guess. As far as people can walk on proper footpaths who cares…. at least for time being.

One more piece of comedy. To our surprise and a bit of shock (no pun intended) the two sides of the LB Road, east and west, are the responsibility of two different offices of TNEB. East side EB man was joking that he is from the “Sodukadu” (cemetery in Besant Nagar). West side comes under Indira Nagar team. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to us since we found out during the tendering of the LB project, the two sides come under two different Wards. Hence two different tenders and two different contractors.  Can the Gods of Footpaths play any crueler pranks on us?

But now there is huge momentum. Prepare to walk on a decent piece of LB footpath soon.

Finally, I must say this. Funny and tedious all this may sound, I must say that every official, no matter what his/her title, have been extremely courteous and supportive of the project. This shouldn’t be a surprise yet it is. Each of these officials are in fire fighting mode. They put in very long hours, have to manage the almost impossible, yet they never lose their cool. Even under all this pressure and delays, many a times from our end, they are decent.We have changed designs slightly every time we realised that ground reality is different from what we thought, or when we realised that there was a better way to solve the problem, etc. Basically we the ivory tower intellectuals and designers pondering, standing in the middle of the project, , they have been patient. Neat guys!

As I have always maintained, it is not the staff, it is the system, stupid! (My apologies …. after Bill Clinton’s team came up with the “It’s the economy, stupid” there has been various versions of it. This is mine).