Compulsory flexi hour provision for a smooth and sober city transit

City transit infrastructure without institutional control and public policy in not going to work!

Traffic Calming
Strategies 

In a buzzing city of developing countries where people are rushing everyday to reach their regular destinations like offices, institutions etc., desperately trying to reach before cut-off times assigned by the administration of these respective organizations, traffic chaos is bound to happen leading to traffic law violation, travel anxiety, road rage, minor or major accidents etc. By applying a cut off time for reaching work place, institutions etc. people are forced to become ignorant to each other’s convenient and safety while on road, because each one of them has something at stake, their job, their carrier, their salary, marks, etc. People are in hurry because if they won’t reach office or institutions before time they will be considered undisciplined employee, students and so on, they will be bullied and can be subjected to monetary penalty and disciplinary actions. No one wants to go through that pain.

Organizational independence in a city environment is apparently a productive model, but at times leads to chaos. In lack of public stake in private organizations in those policy levels which are likely to affect city functionality, many private institutions tend to have monopolistic and dictatorship approach at their internal policy level, like assigning cutoff time to reach work place leading to city transport problems. City governing institutions have to have some control or say over those functional elements of city wide organizations, primarily for offices and other work places, which directly affect the transit health of a city. Excluding the critical and lifeline works, there has to be a city wide blanket flexible timing system for work places, which provision should be made compulsory for a sober and responsible transit behavior of any city.

Flexible timing strategies might include a reasonable buffer time to reach work place, possibility to occasionally work from home, different office timing for different zones of city, etc. based on rigorous analysis of transit data pattern and land use analysis. Public institutions will have to work hand in hand with private organization, stakeholders and communities for this purpose. Cities and organization also need to increasingly focus their policies towards target oriented work rather than judging work done by the time spent at work place. More the flexibility provided at anchor destinations within city, smoother will be the traffic and this is not possible without the timely and sensible planning intervention at functional level of city wide organizations and transport system.  

By : Anoop Jha

All the Planning Effort goes in vain if not implemented and maintained well.

Why we plan something which we can't maintain!!

Or rather why we can't also plan how to maintain the same infrastructure while we are busy preparing city blueprint and master plan. 

Infrastructure without stringent maintenance measures is like .."a plan for how to waste the precious resources in efficient way".    

An efficient infrastructure if not maintained well, leads to speedy wastage of fine resources

Right Color for Right Occasion

Comprehensive Color Matrix with associated Values 

Colors preferred and used for different occasions, purposes etc. Gray highlighted areas point to colors and respective usages, i.e. Colors appropriate for Corporate Presentation, Colors most used for advertisement, used in Interiors, Colors naturally preferred by different genders, etc.  

How Facebook incited design sense in layman.

Do you see cropped family photograph mounted on living room wall? Usually not!!

The only fundamental difference between a designer and a layman in context of design is the way they see all things intangible or concrete. When graphic designers look at something, they see it as a building block for their design subject exploring possibilities to infuse their creativity, but laymen see things as it is. Graphic Designers usually pick up a subject or a set of elements then break them into pieces only to rearrange them again making it a little abstract and hence interesting. It’s too tricky a job for a layman, so they simply leave this design work to designers.

It you try to recall a classic family photograph of your grandparents in black & white or your parent’s photograph in sepia or your own picture with your wife or friends in full blown HD colors, you will find one common thing in all these, no matter what the age of photograph is, all these photographs have been clicked with a wide field of view to capture all the subjects “in totality” with slight “margin” on all the sides. When we take a photograph especially a family one, we not only want to capture the individuals but we also want to capture that beautiful moment, that ambiance and that environment, so we tend to shoot a photograph with larger frame capturing surrounding environment of the person or subject as well.  

   

When Facebook introduced Timeline feature, it empowered a common man to be a designer knowingly or unknowingly with a tool called Cover photograph, most of you have used this feature. What is interesting here is that this linear space allocated for the cover photograph is pre-decided and has been freezed only with a little flexibility in terms of adjustment of photographs. Now all one has to do is to upload a picture here, adjust it vertically and job is done. Now when you upload your family photograph here, that initial carefully captured photograph with extra margin around the subjects and surrounding ambiance and so on is all gone and you will see a new cropped version of the same photograph in the cover photograph section of your facebook. And surprisingly you will start liking this new cropped version of the photograph even more now. Ever wondered why? Because you have applied a basic thumbrule of graphic design here knowingly or unknowingly, thanks to facefook feature i.e. to crop the image to an extent so that it start gaining abstractness and hence making it more interesting. Fortunately that space provided for cover picture is such that it allows you to crop the image only from two sides which makes the image more abstract and dynamic. See everyone is designer now!! No wonder why you are spending more time on facebook since the timeline was introduced!! 

Need for instant settlement mechanism and policy for minor road incidents.

For a safer city

Nature of most of minor traffic accidents which involves two or more than two parties is such that damage is caused less due to the incident but more due to post incident rage, argument and settlement process. And unfortunately people are left to settle the issue on their own in lack of immediate settlement and relief mechanism when the incident occurs. Irony is that insurance provision is there for major damages of life and assets due to accident but no immediate functional rescue and settlement system with an agreed token amount/ repair coupon system etc. for minor accidents involving two or more parties which leads to road rage and is much frequent and growing phenomenon in many developing countries.

It’s high time that government need to intervene and come up with a policy which is acceptable to majority of transport community and common man to deal with issues of road rage. Government in consultation with insurance providers, enforcement agencies and community should prepare a full-fledged compulsory instant settlement mechanism and policy which should work even in absence of law enforcement personals, for minor road incidents  involving low damage to asset and no damage to life, incidents like scratch on car body, vehicle being hit by other vehicle with minimal damage, thing like that which can lead to small to major road rage incidents. A scheme which help neutralise the anger and argument between two or more involved parties, leaving them with a win win situation. Some strategies can be like making compulsory blanket third party insurance system for even minor road incidents with focus on on-the-spot monetary settlement or agreement in addition to the said policy.

Famous Industrial clusters of India

Industrial Clusters known for intense output and large market share. 

Educated nuisance on road

A common sight on the urban roads of developing countries

Traffic, poor transit infrastructure and bad transport management is always there to blame, an easy excuse even for mistakes made by many on road purposefully of unknowingly.  Mistakes apparently minor but putting life and assets at risk. Mistakes apparently they don’t even get panelised for. Mistakes driven by petty motives and justified by Silly excuses, creating a chain of indiscipline on road. These are not the unprivileged and uneducated masses but supposedly rich and well educated strata of the society, those who can afford car in the first place. Even if they are not driving themselves they allow certain obvious driving blunders to happen day and night by not pointing out mistakes committed by their drivers. Unfortunately these educated offenders have spend half of their life getting best of the education polishing their intellect but hardly few dedicated hours given in driving schools. Our education system focuses so much on building intellect that it doesn’t even care about something which is so vital for life, i.e. driving safe on road, not to speak of morality lessons for roads. Driving lessons should be compulsory part of education curriculum. And if parents themselves are transport illiterate how will they teach skills, logic and ethic of road to their children.  No wonder there are so many so frequent road rage incidents across the world.

A very frequent, obvious but unnoticed driving mistake that they commit here on road mostly purposefully is driving with side mirror in closed position or even without rear view / side mirrors in cars at times and it becomes more dangerous a phenomenon when clubbed with changing lanes without indicators. And apparently they don’t get panelized for such acts most of the time. Indicator example is equally true for bikers. How can they afford doing such things putting others and their own life in danger? Reasons can be many but most obvious explanation seem to be that they love their car very much especially the side mirrors and they are afraid that some passing by car will touch, hit or break the side mirror and that’s why they prefer to keep the side mirror closed and there is always an excuse for that act i.e. traffic, reduced carriageway due to encroachment, other people driving unsensibly on road and so on.

What they forget while busy negotiating the traffic jams through gridlocked roads and narrow streets while trying to protect rear view mirror of their cars that this same mirror in open position increases the virtual envelop of car and hence increases safety envelop of their car as well.  Side mirrors not only help you assess the traffic situation behind you and hence help you plan your next maneuver on road more logical and safe but it also helps increase the distance between your car and other cars passing by, hence reducing the probability of other cars coming in contact with your car body. Not to speak of ease in parking which rear view/ side mirrors provide. Was little puzzled to see that some car manufacturers even launch their lower segment models without having rear view mirror on one side posing it’s a luxury car accessory not a necessity. They need to understand the difference between luxury and necessity!! Mirrors for car have been invented for some purposes and have evolved in course of time just for your own safety, so better start using them now.

You might also like to explore some thoughts on new strategic intervention to reduce transport accident and casualties in other post here.