National Highway 22 has been the scene of six fatalities in as many weeks. The hazards on the road are obvious to everyone who makes the drive between Chandigarh and Panchkula. One reason why the road is so dangerous is that there is at present no way to segregate trucks and buses, cars, two-wheelers and non-motorised vehicles such as cycles and carts. Despite their great differences in mass, speed and maneuverability, vehicles of all types of crowd onto this highway.They have no choice: NH-22 is the sole artery linking the two towns. As the road falls almost entirely within the Union Territory, the responsibility for upgrading the highway and enforcing traffic safety falls on the engineers and police of Chandigarh and so we see usual situation of government with its limited means and plethora of procedures and clearances desperately struggling to cope with a rapidly expanding phenomenon called private transportation. Plans for additional roads with flyovers and bridges are being pushed through as fast as possible but no one expects to see these new routes opened for another three years - minimum!It is easy to talk of radical approaches to the traffic problems afflicting the Chandigarh-Panchkula-Mohali area. A favourite haseen sapna is the subway or, almost as good, a ring railway. Such a facility would assuredly give citizens optimum mobility even as it decongests roads and shapes the long-term management of traffic of the entire three-state area. Unfortunately, making this multi-crore scheme a reality is simply beyond the Administration's finances. Even the creation of simple pedestrian under-passes at high-traffic crossings has not gone beyond the city's first and only under-pass linking Sector 22 and the Interstate Bus Terminus.Another often proposed solution involves expanding the bus service. Those who routinely travel by bus in the city note that Chandigarh's service is already fairly good: buses are frequent and except for peak hours they are not overcrowded; the routes are rational and fares within reason. Anyone who has to depend on the buses to get around can do so without much hassle. One suspects that adding more buses would increase rather than decrease congestion and road hazards. The third radical suggestion for making roads safer is almost too terrible to think of and one whose very mention is bound to evoke howls of indignation both from the public and from car manufacturers. Still, let's just whisper it once: "Tax private vehicles heavily." Admittedly this is Heresy with a Capital H - but it is workable.If every new car were allowed on the road only after paying an incredibly stiff (and annually renewable) license fee, at least a certain percentage of people would choose to forego the convenience and status-satisfaction of driving their own car - thereby decongesting the streets. Those determined to be car-borne no matter what the price, would fatten the public exchequer, enabling the construction of more and better roads and possibly even things like metro-rail systems and world class bus services. Those who say it can't be done may kindly take a look at Singapore's vehicle taxes - and their public transportation systems. Alternatively, take a look at the 115 new cars coming onto Chandigarh roads every day and balance that increase against the Administration's strictly limited budget . and against the rising accident death-toll. Either we pay for better transport management or we accept high road fatality rates. As the old-time highway robber used to say: Your money or your life.
