Delhi traffic

Half of the time I spent in Delhi was either in a taxi or in a rickshaw. This inevitably led me to think about traffic and how such apparent chaos seems to work. There is actually a fairly clear system underneath. First of all who has priority over who: trucks-buses-cars-taxis-rickshaws-motorbikes-bikes-pedestrians. The buses and trucks will take their place and around them the cars. Any free space between them will be taken by rickshaws and motorbikes, and on the sides bikes and people will try to get by. Since at any moment you might find someone coming in the wrong direction, doing a crazy u-turn, reverse or any such unexpected action, when driving you only look at what's happening in the front, not the sides and never behind you. It is the person behind you who has to maneuver around what you do. This explains why many cars and rickshaws do not have lateral mirrors. What for?

In order to keep traffic flowing all vehicles are constantly changing lanes and passing each other, especially the most mobile ones (rickshaws and motorbikes). For this to work they use honking as a signaling mechanism: once means "I'm here", two honks mean "I'm passing you", three or more mean "$$%@@!!". The problem is that sometimes they just honk for the fun of it, so the signal loses all value and all you get is a lot of noise and a lot of chaos.

Even if the system appears to work it is very stressful and very costly. So the question is: how to make it better? I have the idea that if all the vehicles on the streets were to abide by the number of lanes available and not take up the space in between they would not fit. There would be gridlock, a permanent traffic jam. This is what happens when you have more people and cars and rickshaws than kilometers of roads. Someone told me that with the entrance of "nano", the 1000 USD car, rickshaws will disappear, since it will be the same price to have an AC car than a rickshaw. I think not. Rickshaws exist to be able to move between all the cars and buses and get people to where they need to go (funny fact: Mexico is now importing rickshaws from India. It's the latest thing in small towns: cheaper than a taxi and perfect for small distances).

So I still don't have a clear idea on what might work. Clearly the system is an informal institution that solves the problems that would otherwise make driving impossible. Can it be ameliorated? Probably. I think usable sidewalks for people, not for cars to park in would be a very good start. I'll keep thinking about it.