there is always a huge cry about the traffic problems, the pavement problems, garbage problems etc in the city. but the infrastructure development of the outskirts of the city is hardly been discussed. concerns pop up once in blue moon, but they are easily forgotten by people and authorities.

there is much to talk about fort cochin area, where i hail from. the general perception is

'Fort Kochi=Garbage+Mosquitoes'

this is not a recent phenomena. it's been there since ages. gcda, corporation,councillors... everyone has given up and the mosquitoes are ruling the place. garbage bins are always leaking and the cattle wandering on the road like playing with the food packets and plastic wastes.during monsoon the situation is worse. waste of food articles get pasted on road and the plastic bags float in the monsoon water. the drainages are closed in some parts in unscientific manner. this blocks water from its smooth flow through drainage. so the residents get free training in swimming in this 'pure' water.

but recently as the water flow in Rameswaram canal is blocked, people have to swim even inside their houses. the canal is not cleaned frequently it is one of the main reasons for never ending 'mosquitoes'. there are fog engines, 'fog mans' ..... but now the situation is such that mosquitoes can't exist without them! now the residents celebrate the 'mosquito culture' through conducting competitions in mosquito catching.

Bus bays along S.A.Road

I always get down at bus stops along S.A.Road. However, I have always wondered, why there werent any bus bays along the road, given that it is wide enough. The problem is, when you say you want to get down at a particular stop, and you get the ticket for the same, the buses dont consider the stops as the points where you want to get down. They always drop you off somewhere around the point you want to get down at, often a few metres away from the stop. I have had to get down in the middle of the road many a times, when there were mild traffic jams near the stops. And then I would have to play a game of mazes, making my way around the vehicles, finding a safer way to walk. Or, I would have to get down a few metres in front of the designated bus stop, and walk all the way back. ( That, when you dont even have a pavement along the road! That is a different issue though.)

However, it doesnt work the other way round. If you want to board a bus, you wait at the proper bus stop. Else, the buses dont stop and pick you up.

If, however, we were to have properly designed bus bays, we could eliminate this problem. Bus bays would enable the passengers to wait comfortably, and would also ensure their safety while boarding and getting down. It would also be safer for buses to stop as well, since they are moving out of the rest of the traffic. Standard width needed for a bus bay is around 12 feet, and given the width of the road, it shouldnt be hard to accomodate bus bays.

Pothole's own country

The title, I believe, is quite self explanatory. Though quite blunt and probably even offending, it is the reality. Come rainy season, and we have potholes and gutters( read, ponds and lakes) emerging on the roads from nowhere. Pedestrians cannot walk on the roads without stepping to atleast one of these. Either you have to master the art of recognising and then jumping across wide puddles and potholes, or else you have to put up with stepping into all of them. And if you are lucky enough, you might even manage to fall into a drainage which hasn't been cleaned for ages(read, maybe from the days of Hitler)

Pictures of people falling into ditches and potholes on roads are scattered across the newspapers almost everyday. No wonder, accident rates go up during rainy season. It is something like a chain reaction. One person falls into a pothole, the next one trips over him, and so on. Whilst many people across the world travel to Kerala to witness the monsoon, is this what we want to show them? Let alone visitors, think about school children who have to bear the brunt. Most cities now have school roads, which are designed with school children in mind. But here, in Kochin, we have our school children having a hard time walking to their schools. By the time they reach, they are all wet and dirty.

Now the question is, do we want this drama of filling potholes and gutters every year? It has almost become like this annual ritual. You have rains coming, potholes emerging, and then newspapers and channels reporting it, and then as a concluding ceremony, the PWD department filling the holes, only to go through the whole cycle once again, next year. Maybe, it is high time we re-think the tar and bituminous type of road surfacing that we have.