DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: The Need for Traffic Management and Engineering

The developed nations have successfully created a reasonable balance between the need to expand road networks to add capacity and manage capacity with safety component within the overall traffic management (e.g., both the UK and USA have a legislative policy priority on road safety) system. Similarly, Goverment of India (GOI) needs to tie “capacity expansion” with “traffic management” on the Indian roads. The current road policy of the GOI can look at establishing such a link. For this purpose, the GOI must not assume mistakenly that local traffic police in Indian cities are traffic engineers who can manage traffic in their jurisdiction. There is a huge difference between controlling traffic signals and managing traffic using engineering practice. Clearly, traffic police “control” traffic, and one cannot downplay their role, but traffic management goes much beyond the control of signals or intersections or VIP movements. The key issue is managing road capacity with supply-demand equation in mind and a focus on proper deployment of traffic control devices and establishment of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). These are highly technical issues that cannot be left as police functions under the daily traffic control operations at intersections. The role of traffic police is to enforce traffic laws and parking rules. As against this, all municipal road agencies’ work must be in coordination with the task devised by trained traffic engineers.

Road Capacity Perspective

A road capacity perspective can be exemplified with the following Indian example as it shows that India has placed a high priority on road sector development.

In December 2005, the New York Times ran a significant series of front page articles on India’s massive efforts to build the national road network and the Golden Quadrilateral – a 3,625 mile, six-lane road project that spans over 13 states and ties four major urban areas: New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and Mumbai. This roadway coverage has clearly addressed the mobility issue and shifted India’s priorities in the right direction. It links transportation to economic well-being of a large segment of Indian society, perhaps in anticipation of the explosion in motorisation in the coming decades in India as shown in Figure 5.

Specific to developing countries, modern roads are built to offer individual mobility, aggregate mobility, and access to rural and urban areas. With the Indian economy expected to grow between 6-10%, this huge investment and corresponding expansion of national highways (40,000 miles over 15 years) has a great potential to achieve mobility and contribute to rapid economic benefits on a great magnitude of citizens. This side of the equation, looking through the eyes of development, is well understood by ‘economic and road planners’ in India and perhaps in other developing countries too. However, with the anticipated increase in highway capacity (e.g. by all accounts, India’s vehicle-carrying capacity will rise multi-fold), there will also be a corresponding rise in traffic congestion (already a reality in most cities), rapid vehicle growth, air and noise pollution, and accidents, injuries and fatalities. This is evident and must be recognised by policy makers without losing any more time.

Road Safety Perspective

The economic perspective on traffic safety in developing countries is of great concern to road planners and policy makers. According to the World Bank estimates, road crashes cost approximately one to three percent of a country’s Gross National Product (GNP). It is estimated that the developing countries currently lose about $100 billion every year due to road crashes. This amount is almost twice as much as the total development assistance received worldwide by these countries. Such losses undoubtedly inhibit the economic and social progress of a country. India’s share in these losses is significant (equivalent to its annual defence allocation) and will continue to rise in the future if nothing is done to accelerate the road safety and traffic management.

Road safety begins with the national vision which should be developed and incorporated in political and societal philosophies. At the same time, the transport systems and road safety management techniques used in developed nations may not always be suitable for the safety needs of the developing countries for a variety of reasons – primary differentiators include the road traffic mix and road user behaviour. Conversely, however, with adjustments to local movements and space limitations, techniques from developed nations can be applied in the urban road environment in India. For example, some adverse or unsafe conditions shown in the figures can be removed by providing traffic engineering solutions that include pedestrian crossing facilities, road signs and markings, lane separation for slow moving traffic, and even a dedicated bus lane for peak periods. Several other remedies that need to be provided include effective enforcement and road user education.

Some factors affecting road safety:

Road traffic mix: Some issues are obvious and well recognised by the observers. They include: Motorised and non-motorised traffic, slow and fast moving vehicles, mixed traffic sharing common lanes, lack of footpaths, and the large number of pedestrians on roads. In general, lane management and parking and access management are inadequately recognised and addressed in developing countries. Two-wheelers constitute a large share of mixed traffic (e.g. in India, over 75% of the traffic is that of two wheelers).

Traffic police: In developing countries, they control daily traffic, including the enforcement function and VIP movements. In most developed nations, however, traffic management (which includes the function of traffic control) and road safety come under the purview of the professional traffic management organisations, while police departments are responsible for the enforcement.

Violations and poor road users’ behaviour: The use of roads is an individual privilege that must be exercised with a sense of cooperative behaviour among elements that make up the “roadside community”. However, such a notion is weak in most developing countries. Road users’ behaviour is considered a major contributing factor to accidents and fatalities.

Design Standards: operational practices, engineering knowledge base, accident reporting and their associated databases, enforcement of traffic laws, and driver training / licensing are a few other areas that are addressed differently in developed (satisfactorily addressed) and developing (inadequately to scantly addressed) countries.