Traffic Congestion Problems and Possible Solutions In India Research Essay

Question

Task: Write a research essay based on a problem and solution essay model structure

Topic: Choose a topic of interest that is related to your further studies at university. Your teacher will help you with this. Please see the EAP2 ‘Sample topics’ guide for some ideas.

Answer

Introduction
This Research Essay will explore traffic problems faced in India. Traffic is one of the regular problems in India and traffic congestion is most severe in the cities and towns of India (Sundar, et al., 2015). The paper will help in evaluating the main reason and effective solutions for the traffic jam on the Indian roads which is due to the lack of traffic sense among the people of India. There are many causes of congested traffic in India, some of them are factors like large number of vehicles, shortage of networks of roads and expressways, road accidents and poor implementation of traffic rules. The speed of the traffic reduces the traffic congestion. One of the research shows that vehicles during the traffic jam burns more energy and pollutes the environment.

Problems of Traffic Congestion in India
This Research Essay outlines traffic congestion as posing the following problems:

1. 1. One of the significant issues that arise due to heavy traffic in India is the air pollution. Air pollution in India is a severe problem which is caused by the release of air from the vehicles and traffic congestion. “The cars, buses, bikes and other vehicles release carbon monoxide and black smoke which enters the lungs of the people and makes it difficult for them to breathe as they inhaled the polluted air” (Reddy, Ram, O'Byrne, Vanajakshi & Ghosh, 2018). In India, some taxi and auto rickshaw drivers use the mixture of contaminated fuels. The mixing of petrol and diesel with some other fuels of low price is in practice in India. This practice is hurting the environment and it caused by the harmful emission of air from the vehicles which initiates the air pollution. The tax on petrol is higher than the charge of diesel in India while the other lubricants have no or very little tax. So this practice of mixture is carried out to save the price of the transportation. More critically it is seen that people who work in the same office could travel together on carpooling or bike pooling. This could lessen the number of vehicles on the road and also reduces the problem of traffic congestion. This method should also be encouraged by the various offices and companies and support their employees. Even the government should prohibit people to use more than two vehicles and at the same time help them to use one car for one person.
2. According to this Research Essay, India has the second largest road network in the world covering about 5.4 million kilometers. “The Indian roads bear a considerable burden of almost 90% of the Indian public and transports travel by road” (Kumar, et al., 2015). The streets are mostly blocked due to traffic jam, and it is caused by the use of private transportation which gradually decreasing the condition of the roads. So it is found that the roads create the traffic issues and these traffic issues are not allowing to develop any new routes. The condition of most of the roads is declining as these roads are always busy all over the year. Bad public transportations exist in most of the Indian cities, so most of the Indian people depend on their private transport for their regular journey. Irregular development of each region of India like in some villages caused people to move to the big towns and cities to find a better job and to lead a decent life by working in a big city. This is the primary factor of congestion of traffic in India.
3. Major cities like Delhi and many other cities of India are facing the issue related with the traffic congestion. The standard speed of many vehicles on the road of Indian city is less than 20 kilometer per hour, and a journey of 10 kilometers could take 30 minutes or more. Critically it is seen that at such speeds, Indian vehicles release 4 to 8 times more air pollutants than the regular traffic and also consumes more carbon during the traffic congestion. “The increase in the number of cars also increases the emissions of carbon particles and other heavy metals” (Jain, et al., 2016). It has also been evaluated that 50% of children have asthma in cities like Bangalore. The calculation of the cost of traffic congestion is based on the gas and loss of productivity which consist of pollution; the time spent during the congested traffic, opportunity cost and accidents calculated on a yearly basis. The big cities of India are losing up to $22 billion every year to traffic congestion, and this burden is carried by the commuters of this cities.

Solutions to the Indian Traffic Problems
Solutions to the problems outlined on this Research Essay are mentioned above are as follows:

1. The Indian Government should take some steps to check the air pollution. The vehicles should get occasional machinery checked to control the release of poisonous gases and heavy smoke. “To compute the duration of green light calculation of the length of queue or traffic count at section of road in each direction during the red light is considered” (Tomar, et al., 2018). People should use pooling of the vehicles like carpooling and bike pooling and could also use cycle for shorter distances. This method could reduce the air pollution as well as the traffic congestion. Vehicles that run on CNG and by electricity could also be used to check the air pollution, and at same it could be helpful for controlling the traffic jam.
2. The government in India should ban the private vehicles and promote the use of public transport plus some other plans like BRT (Roy, et al., 2017). Some Indian cities like Pune have started the scheme of The Bus Rapid Transport (BRT), and it could prove to be useful if it is rightly executed in other cities and towns of India (Jayapal & Roy, 2016). A charge could be levied on the people by the length of the road and the time spend on the usage of the road. The high quality of raw materials should be used for maintaining the durability of the road.
3. The Indian Government should construct bus stops and separate roads for the vehicles like the buses car, bikes and should maintain the system. This would diminish the flow of the traffic and reduces the number of road accidents. The Government should also inspire the public to use public vehicles so that the private transportation decreases in the roads.
4. It is important for the government to execute proper planning and come up with new and effective strategies which will help in reducing the issue of traffic congestion. The roads needs to be widen up for accommodating more vehicles as to increase the reliability of the public.
5. The traffic management system needs to be enhanced as it will help in executing the traffic related tasks much easier. Moreover, the government needs to utilize the latest and innovative techniques in order to reduce the adverse effects of traffic jam on the roads.
6. One of the way is to create awareness among the people regarding moving in their own line while driving on roads so that the issue of traffic jam can be reduced to some extent.

Conclusion
It is concluded that the traffic congestion is a significant issue in India but this issue could be solved by implementing some new and innovative ideas by the Indian government as well as by the conservationist of the environment and civil engineers. Some of the plans had already been executed, but it needs effort and strategy by a large scale to successfully implement any new idea. The planning is make in such a manner that whole country gets benefit from it. Rules should be made for the violation of traffic laws which would reduce the congestion of the traffic and also prevent the road accidents. The Research Essay also emphasizes on the importance of imposing Hefty fines should be levied for violating traffic laws like in the Gulf or Western countries.

References
Choudhury, D. K., & Gupta, S. (2015). An In-Depth Study of Traffic Congestion Detection and Management in Delhi. Prabandhan: Indian Journal of Management, 8(5), 7-24.

Jain, S., Aggarwal, P., Sharma, P., & Kumar, P. (2016). Vehicular exhaust emissions under current and alternative future policy measures for megacity Delhi, India. Journal of Transport & Health, 3(3), 404-412.

Jayapal, C., & Roy, S. S. (2016, March). Road traffic congestion management using VANET. In Advances in Human Machine Interaction (HMI), 2016 International Conference on(pp. 1-7). IEEE.

Kumar, K., Parida, M., & Katiyar, V. K. (2015). Short term traffic flow prediction in heterogeneous condition using artificial neural network. Transport, 30(4), 397-405.

Reddy, S. K., Ram, B., O'Byrne, M., Vanajakshi, L., & Ghosh, B. (2018, April). Alternative approach to traffic state analysis on Indian roads using image processing. In Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers-Transport (pp. 1-11). Thomas Telford Ltd.

Roy, P., Patra, N., Mukherjee, A., Ashour, A. S., Dey, N., & Biswas, S. P. (2017). Intelligent traffic monitoring system through auto and manual controlling using PC and Android Application. In Applied video processing in surveillance and monitoring systems (pp. 244-262). IGI Global.

Sundar, R., Hebbar, S., & Golla, V. (2015). Implementing intelligent traffic control system for congestion control, ambulance clearance, and stolen vehicle detection. IEEE Sensors Journal, 15(2), 1109-1113.

Tomar, A. S., Singh, M., Sharma, G., & Arya, K. V. (2018). Traffic Management using Logistic Regression with Fuzzy Logic. Procedia Computer Science, 132, 451-460.