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The Safe Road Awareness Project

By Dilip Muralidaran on March 15, 2009

I thought I would write what we discussed today so that we can stay on the same page. The Road awareness project is all about one thing. Making people realize the importance of safe and quality roads. Roads are a critical component of our public infrastructure. Roads are fundamental to our everyday survival. No matter who is in power, what government is ruling the requirement of safe and usable roads is a fundamental need.

Sadly, as far as Chennai is concerned we have seen our roads deteriorate big time, especially post the last rainy season due to the floods. What’s more ironic is the effort that we see from the government body(s) to repair and restore such roads which is hardly visible.

Even if roads are repaired the quality of the repair is so bad that it makes little difference. An apt example would be the new road leading to NIFT and IT Expressway from Ascendas. The road has been laid recently but its not flat, there are so many variations on the levelness of this road and major drainage lines which are risen above the road level and the new tar laid over it to accommodate it leading to a huge hump like a mountain that is dangerous when driving in the night, since streetlights don’t work consistently here.

So what can we as small timer citizens do about this? Well, for once we can get our act together and make people vote. We can highlight this issue to everyone on the roads and make them approach their zonal/ward office to lodge a complaint about the poor quality of roads. We need to capture the attention of the common man to make him act.

So how can this be done? The idea is simple but is not without risks:-

1. Get a can or red paint/paint spray.
2. Spray a circle around potholes, road problems, ditches, uncovered manholes, illegal speed breaker… you name it.
3. Take a picture of this.
4. Have an exhibition of these images.

The red paint will get people to notice the problem. It acts as deterrent and people can stay away from potholes and other problems on the road. Flyers can be handed out to educate people on what they can do, where they can lodge a complaint when we paint the roads.

Sounds as easy as it may, as good as our intentions are it is not without problems we can do this. The law may find the red circles as a nuisance issue. More importantly, this may bruise the ego of politicians/govt. which may lead to potential issues/problems.

No process is without its risk, change does not come easy. Our forefathers died in the process of getting is freedom from the British. I think its just to say we can risk being yelled at or question for mischief if we can change our roads, make them safe and create awareness.

We will have a meeting to discuss this on the coming Saturday 21st of march, 2009 at "The Madras Terrace House" at 6 PM.