An excerpt from some ideas that I was sharing with my recommenders to write me a reference, follow after the next paragraph. This is about how we could smoothen the flow of Traffic in Kathmandu, Nepal. The central idea to this is
"To not let the vehicles that are not coming from or going to, the same road; pass by, by promoting closed polygonal-circular, squared, triangular and other polygons at junctions"
And a week ago I watched this very interesting video from the channel Vox: Superblocks: How Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZORzsubQA_M"
The video explores how Barcelona is promoting social life and connecting people by reducing cars reducing traffic in the heart of communities. The closed polygon idea together with the Superblock idea with wise choice of one way usage and smart programming of traffic lights can be useful in designing a smoother traffic way in Amsterdam.
"2. Smoother Traffic, Healthier Roads
One fine sunny day; a cool one too, as I was walking past the Tinkune Park; near the Tribhhuvan International Airport, I had a clever idea based on my observation. The park is triangular in shape with a road along each side and a junction at each of the corners, which almost everyone passing by notices.
What I noticed was that on one side- the Baneshwor-Koteshwor road, the traffic is very heavy. The other two roads are free and the traffic is smooth. However, if the park was not there and all the roads were to meet at the same junction, the heavy traffic on the Baneshwor-Koteshwor road would trouble the vehicles on the other two roads.
Thinking it the other way; making a park at junctions with heavy traffic could cause fewer disturbances on at least one of the roads and probably all of the roads at the junction. The key to that; two vehicles not going the same way are not allowed to meet. For example, a bus at Koteshwor corner of the park travelling towards Airport and a car at the Airport corner of the park travelling towards Baneshwor would never meet; if they started out at the same time from the corners. This definitely decreases the mess in the roads whilst creating a free space and some healthy grass amid the crowd.
For those junctions with four roads; such as that in Maharajganj, I would think of four quarter-circle shaped park each between two roads. This would facilitate vehicles travelling straight on preexistent paths and those travelling to adjacent roads would go along the arc of the parks. The vehicles travelling towards Chabahil from Basundhara and those travelling from Basundhara to Chabahil would continue on straight while those travelling from Basbari to Baluwatar and those travelling from Baluwatar to Basbari would stop. And on the go of the traffic, the latter would go straight and the former would stop. Those vehicles travelling from Basbari to Chabahil would go along the arc of the park between these two roads and those travelling from Basbari to Basundhara would go along the arc of the park between those roads. But of course, with all the houses, parks would not be applicable in Maharajganj. But somewhere else this could be a pretty neat idea.
For places like maharajganj, I had another idea and that was on some other extremely sunny mornings. I would ride my cousin’s motorbike to Baneshwor and it all comes back to Tinkune.
Just till the bridge in Tinkune- which is narrower than the roads, the traffic is stuck it takes more than five minutes to get across that little section of the road. And once you cross the bridge, it’s absolutely free and spacious. And this dramatic experience happens at around 10 in the morning when hurrying vehicles go left and right causing their own mess.
And in heavily crowded junctions; where making parks is not possible, this could be it. If a small section of the road prior to the junction is narrowed down a bit making footpaths or planting trees, a lot of traffic would get stuck prior to the junction creating lesser mess at the junction. Footpaths and trees would be the perfect way to create free, natural space in the crowded streets of Kathmandu.
And for the best, widening roads would be a great thing to do, and better to do faster and made stronger to avoid a lot of dust. "
Thank you very much!
