ENJURANGO - TENALI

Enjurango Enjurango from Tenali - One helluva crazy song from the maestro himself. To start off with potentially jarry trumpet orchestra needs guts, and ARR doesn't lack them! For a while you feel as if you should sing along in this marriage "baaraat" type song, and then for a while you feel like playing the guitar chords yourselves.

A self-indulgent song, ARR opens up our ears to a robust Kamal Hassan voice paired up with an ever-silky Chitra's voice (even after so many years in the industry, she's been the sweetest sounding singer, with an ability to take the song by its horns as well as project an innocent female side!!)

The trumpets provide the strength to the song, with a deadly combination with the percussions (Sivamani drumming away to glory here!!!) and suddenly, to back up Chitra's voice with the subtlety, ARR introduces slightly louder guitar chords, shifting the rhythm back and forth from percussions to guitar chords.

One helluva song folks - listen to it here (for all those who do not have proper computer speakers with a separate boombox, you can download the songs from my esnips account and play it in your music systems or good quality headphones. If you do not have those, well, may be this is the time to buy one!!!!!)

Encharungo.mp3

DEALING WITH POTHOLES -II

Other major reasons leading to potholes on the roads of Hyderabad is the unfinished projects coupled with badly designed roads.
Dealing with the road design first, the existing ones are design flat, without any slope factor. This results in the water stagnating in the small and negligible troughs that are created due to factors like bad compacting of the raw material beneath and the melting of the tar due to high temperatures. When water stagnates into such smaller pools, it creates an unexpected bounce coupled with friction when vehicles pass through them, and this results in the gravel losing its tar bonding.
This situation, when neglected, snowballs into bigger potholes, and finally makes the whole surface uneven and unfit to drive on.
A well-laid road should ideally be a package from wall to wall, providing space for all elements using the surface. These elements can be active ones like storm-water, pedestrians and vehicular traffic, which are bound to change with time, and then there are passive elements like soil and shrubs or trees planted on the road-side.
Non of these elements should be allowed to over-power the base structure (road). Once the base structure is disturbed, a conflict between these elements starts rendering inconvenience to all of them.

The above image shows the cross section of a well-laid two-lane road (one-way), showing the provision for both the active and passive elements using it. The design is simple yet effective.

It is quite obvious that a little research and the willingness to invest on a better design in the initial stages proves to be maintenance-free and less expensive for the authorities in the long-run.

DEALING WITH POTHOLES - I

I have been reading for quite a while in the newspapers about the traffic woes in Hyderabad due to the potholes and the washed-away roads. It is indeed a sorry state of affairs every monsoon season, and the apathy of the concerned authorities have added to the people's woes.
But thinking from both perspectives, it is very strenuous financially for the municipal corporation to re-lay the ever eroding bitumen roads. And in a country like India, where the multitude and density of vehicular traffic is beyond any transportation engineer's imagination, these bitumen roads cannot withstand the wear and tear.

A simple solution is to replace the bitumen roads with reinforced concrete roads. A proper reinforced concrete slab with minimum 18mm re-bars, can withstand the kind of density and weight of traffic that cities like Hyderabad have. But, keeping in mind the cost of cement and steel, and the costs involved in re-laying the whole road system of a city with concrete, a very simple solution can be arrived at, with a little research and a little common sense.

The authorities need to study about specific points where the weight of the traffic (when taken as a whole) is more on the surface. A little common sense would tell us that usually the weight is more when the traffic is at a standstill and moving at slower, sporadic speeds, rather than when it is moving at a constant speed. This means that the weight and pressure on the surface is greater at intersections or junctions and the average distance used by the vehicles to slow down and stop at these junctions. The braking system works on the concept of friction, and more the friction between the rubber and the bitumen, more is the wear and tear.
If these 'nodes' or high density can be identified and converted to reinforced concrete, I believe that the problem of uneven and premature erosion and the formation of potholes can be reduced by at least 40%.

TRAFFIC BLUES

This has been on my mind ever since I got my own vehicular independence. Increasing population, pollution and traffic have always shown their trends on city road infrastructure, and the city in question here is Hyderabad, and having lived there for more than 15 years, watching the traffic trends change was a major interest of mine.

It was during Mr.Naidu's rule, that the skyline of the city started changing considerably and sooner or later, was required to match it with better roads. I do not know if there was a projection done for the next 10 years, for population and traffic, but the attempt to catch up with the development has taken the city in a direction which it was to actually go in the first place - a master plan.

Well, long story short, roads started being widened and traffic started to grow, matched with the release of a variety of vehicles onto the Indian roads, and two-wheelers led the way, considering the Indian economy. Educating people on lane-systems is an uphill task and thus lane markings are just beautifying factors for the new widened roads.

A major issue being ignored by the government and the public is the growing need for parking spaces. Here, the approach taken by the traffic police is completely off-track. All the busy roads have been assigned as No-Parking zones. And when it comes to the highly dense commercial areas like Abids, Koti, Ameerpet and certain areas of Secunderabad, roads have been widened to accommodate a layer of parking at the cost of accessibility to pedestrian traffic.

Although newly constructed malls like Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle and Hyderabad Central have provided parking garages, they have emerged as bottlenecks in the city, proving that the parking provision has been grossly insufficient. The parking has overflown inevitably onto the roads and has created obstructions for smooth-flowing traffic.

Now, Hyderabad is a city which can come up with a higher Floor-space-index, and these commercial buildings can be taller or wider, without eating up the resources. Especially all those buildings which do not have yard space, should venture out for multi-level parking spaces. And these can be designed with entry from one road and exit from another, which helps distribute the traffic into bigger loops, and avoids spillage onto the roads.

But the public has to learn to respect the space of a fast moving vehicle as well as a pedestrian. Even if it is a five minute errand, parking properly eliminates discomfort. The least respectful people are the drivers of public transportation - Auto rickshaws and Buses. Zooming past in all directions possible and traveling at speeds unsafe for them as well as the rest of the traffic, they have been the root cause to more than 50% of the road accidents in Hyderabad.

Shown below is a rough graphical representation of traffic conditions in Hyderabad on a typical four-lane two-way road system.

I have decided to continue here instead of a sequel. Another major issue I have seen in Hyderabad is the complete lack of road sense. During a busy hour, we can find six vehicles traveling parallel to each other on a three-lane road. Everyone is in a hurry and no one wants to wait. And then we have the public transportation competing with the private ones, and so, Hyderabad has come to a situation where, at any given point /junction the count of auto rickshaws will be much more than any vehicle.

And then, since they thought about widening the roads at the cost of the footpaths, there's is an extra spillage of pedestrian traffic onto the roads,and is usually in a direction perpendicular to it. This results in either slowing down of the traffic or the pedestrians getting hit. And yet, they are in a hurry too, and won't wait for a vehicle to pass before crossing the road.

Another problem is the spillage of street-side vendors 'bandis' and hawkers onto major thoroughfares. A lot can be done like reallocating them according to zones and creating a forum-type space for each zone, restricting the movement of vehicular traffic in those zones and creating more pedestrian-oriented areas. Or else, there is always the capitalist approach to it - eliminate hawkers forever and replace them with a more hard-bound infrastructure. (this is a bad idea because it will render so many people unemployed and I am strongly against it!!!)

All this is a part of a Hyderabadi's life and should be changed without killing the flavor in it.