Delhi - Gurgaon Expressway !
For those of you in outside of India this will not be of too much interest. Or.... maybe it will.
Delhi has now got a new highspeed road connection to a town on the border of Delhi. Gurgaon is the name of the town and it is very important to Delhi as there are alot of BPO setups there as well as an affluent population.
The road itself is very smart. It has turned a 40 minute minute journey into a 15 minute journey !! Excellent you may say. I would agree it is excellent.....except there is a problem. To get onto this "expressway" one must pay a toll. I have no problem with the toll, one must pay for progress. The problem is the traffic jams that have built up to get to the toll gate to pay for the toll. I noticed that the Times of India website was running a poll as to whether the use of the highway should be made free or not. !! ??? I find it somewhat hard to believe that such a high profile newspaper organisation has even thought about running a poll like this let alone actually do it !! The whole focus of the poll was ill thought out. The poll should have leaned more towards something about fining the ill diciplined drivers who are causing all the jams in the first place. The road sense in the capitol city leaves much to be desired. It is the thoughtless drivers who decide that they can use the smartcard gate to pay cash that are holding up the system..... not the system itself. We in India need to be more thoughful about our driving. Having new roads like this is a boon for India yet this poll tries to denigrate what has been done. Would somebody please tell me what is going when this kind of progress is being critisized so vehemently when really we should be looking at ourselves and how we conduct ourselves on the road. Surely this is also a reflection on our society which is supposedly going to be a world leading power in the very near future.
I look forward to your comments.
Peace and Love
Delhi has now got a new highspeed road connection to a town on the border of Delhi. Gurgaon is the name of the town and it is very important to Delhi as there are alot of BPO setups there as well as an affluent population.
The road itself is very smart. It has turned a 40 minute minute journey into a 15 minute journey !! Excellent you may say. I would agree it is excellent.....except there is a problem. To get onto this "expressway" one must pay a toll. I have no problem with the toll, one must pay for progress. The problem is the traffic jams that have built up to get to the toll gate to pay for the toll. I noticed that the Times of India website was running a poll as to whether the use of the highway should be made free or not. !! ??? I find it somewhat hard to believe that such a high profile newspaper organisation has even thought about running a poll like this let alone actually do it !! The whole focus of the poll was ill thought out. The poll should have leaned more towards something about fining the ill diciplined drivers who are causing all the jams in the first place. The road sense in the capitol city leaves much to be desired. It is the thoughtless drivers who decide that they can use the smartcard gate to pay cash that are holding up the system..... not the system itself. We in India need to be more thoughful about our driving. Having new roads like this is a boon for India yet this poll tries to denigrate what has been done. Would somebody please tell me what is going when this kind of progress is being critisized so vehemently when really we should be looking at ourselves and how we conduct ourselves on the road. Surely this is also a reflection on our society which is supposedly going to be a world leading power in the very near future.
I look forward to your comments.
Peace and Love
posted by Sandy at Friday, February 15, 2008
3 Comments:
Hey Sandy,
I am in the UK at the moment and just made an entry on my blog, for the first time in almost a year! (Shocking, I know - but it's www.mannder.typepad.com - if you want to check it out). Anyway, it made me think of your blog and I am glad you visited it. Wow! What a rant. I can see that your blog is becoming quite cathartic for you!? But I can see where you're coming from. It's not the toll that is the problem in India, it's the drivers and you definitely got that right.
Stay in touch!
Sheel
Hi Sand
A good post. My opinion is that the funding of the expressway has not been thought out properly. It is sometimes not possible to just mimic the "western ways" because they are suited to western civilisation. As we all know, the Indian psyche and indeed the civilisation is completely different from the European and the American one (and long may that continue).
It does look like, however, that the planners have forgotten to "think outside the box". They should have realised that you can lead a horse to water but you cannot lead water to a horse.
We all know that Indians just can't stand in queues, whether trying to board a plane, trying to purchase stamps or, as we can see, approaching a toll gate.
My recommendation would be to scrap the toll system in favour of a more technologically advanced method of funding the expressway. One idea would be to implement a number-plate recognition system linked to a central database. This may not be so lucrative initially, but has the bonus of longevity and efficiency.
Sorry, forgot to leave my name
Rick
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