Traffic Jams On The Road To Affluence

Apart from the aesthetic havoc this would wreak, Indian transport planners seem totally unaware of a fundamental principle now taken as axiomatic across the globe—that the more roads and flyovers you build, the more traffic you generate, and the more congestion you end up with. That's why it's now universally accepted that the only way to break the traffic log-jam is by making it cheaper, quicker and safer for people to use public transport. The irony of Bombay's laissez-faire attitude to such problems is that it will drive away precisely those transnationals the city is so keen to attract. No firm wants its employees to spend two or three hours a day commuting to work, especially in a city where crazy property values mean that people have to live ever further from the commercial centre.