Roundabouts at the Road Intersections:
Are They Appropriate for the Indian Context?
Originally posted on https://vinaikumar.wordpress.com/. 25 May 2020
The S G Road, which was on the outskirts of the Ahmedabad city 10 years back, in now a 6-lane intercity road. Probably, in order to facilitate the smooth movement of vehicles at the busy intersections, the planners had made quite a few large roundabouts on this road.
The roundabouts as traffic management device have worked well in the Europe, the US, and some other advanced countries.
For the past 10 years, I have driven my car innumerable times between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar using the S G Road. I have had tense, frustrating and time-consuming moments navigating through these roundabouts. I found them terribly chaotic and life-draining to drive through. One of the roundabouts, named Iskon Circle, was removed about 6 years back and replaced with the regular intersection with traffic signals. This modification has worked noticeably effectively – saving time, and reducing frustration and fatigue.
This brings me to the issue of the frameworks and methods deployed in planning and designing road elements and systems in India. Road, as an artifact for transport and travel, is used by almost everybody. The user profiles and characteristics include a diverse range of age, gender, professions, skills, education, physical abilities, cognitive abilities, languages, motivations, intentions, behaviours and attitudes.
The purpose of a well-designed road systems is to provide efficient, safe, dependable and sustainable service to the target users. These target users and their environments vary widely from one country to another.
I am not discussing here what makes the roundabouts work in the US very well but not India. However, it is necessary to research these issues and develop a good information and insight base that can inform the design of road elements such as intersections and many others in the particular context or/and environment.
In India, road user behaviours are drastically different from what we see in the advanced countries. It is then imperative that we conduct massive user and contextual research in the Indian context to understand what causes accidents (and near-accident situations which are many times the actual accidents – they are the accidents waiting to happen), lack of timely medical care, and other innumerable inconveniences.
There is a need to develop India-specific frameworks, processes and methods of design, management and continuous review of the effectiveness of the solutions.
Vinai Kumar
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