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In Male it is now near impossible to drive a car and park it anywhere near one’s destination. Taxis are never available when one needs them. And things are getting worse every day. If the present trend continues there will soon be no space on the roads even to ride a motorcycle. In most western cities road congestion has been controlled by establishing mass transport systems like trams, buses and subways. Is it too late for Male to develop at least a bus service?
From the hyper congestion on Male streets one could be excused if one believes a bus service is impossible. But is there an alternative way of reducing the congestion? Admittedly the situation appears Catch -22 like: One needs bus services to reduce road congestion, while bus services are impossible without first reducing the congestion. Without a solution for the problem, we will be doomed to watch by as increasing traffic slowly strangles life on the island.
As of now, some outer roads still offer scope for running buses. For example the U shaped segment starting from West Park through Ameenee Magu to Hulhumale Ferry terminal. This route could offer reasonable access to at least a third of the Male population including students and ferry passengers. Depending on the response to the service there are some other wide roads too that could be opened up for bus services.
It is really difficult to predict the success of a mass transport system in a place like Male. But the issue is too serious to be given up as impossible, without even trying.
8 comments:
We need to make bodu thakurufaanu magu wider; put up more traffic lights in main roads, remove traffic lights from around boduthakurufaanu magu on the inside, same time encourage people to use these raods.
On parking, similar it goes, four or five, one in vilingili ferrie, one where nasandhuraa is at, another at near habour or westpark...
It will not be diffucult and infact much better if our society can let go of moto bikes and cars we have. There would be around 2 motor bikes per head in Male' and plenty cars. The place is less than two km across, but we live it like its a continent. If we stop buying motor bikes, cars to show off, and then export all we have may be to bigger islands or another country.(get rid of'em) then we will be far better off. Sounds crazy but honestly do we need all these vehicles we have in Male'. is anything but a way of social stratification and ppl just jump on the bandwagon. Most of us do not have enough money to buy the motor bike (alone) and what abt the repair, service, accesseries.
I thoght they are going to make male' a pedestrial city.
Imagine how much space we gonna have. how clean the air will be. how calm and serene it will be.
Dr. Waheed, every time I go through an a major airpot I wonder why we don’t consider setting up a travelator system in Male. In airports which are several times larger than Male you move around quickly by hopping on to the travelators. This might appear very unconventional at first. But when u really think about this all that you need are around 50 travelators to be put up on the roads in such a way that people could get out of it at every intersection. It will be air-conditioned. You get rid of all the cars and the thousands of motorbikes and u solve the public transport system.
yeah. offer service to more people with less number of vehicles. give the taxi (transport) centers permision to run a land transport service as they see fit. the idea is they can use mix of taxis, buses vans n anything and revoke licenses of any taxi, bus,van not attached to a transport center. apply such a rule to whole country.
A Male' with travelators sounds great! its unique and i think lots of tourist will be attracted to this.
If we can eradicate all the vehicles in Male' and clean the roads. (take singapore/malaysian airport as an example). wait is this just a fantasy. cox sadly there are lots of constructions and other works going on that it will be very difficult to make a system like this while heavy equipments need to move in roads.
But the idea is worth to consider. may be atleast in one area.
Ban private cars. Ban motorcycles.
Ban big size cars as taxis.Perhaps introduce India style kurolhi as taxis. Give a kurolhi with a flag for ministers.Have more ambulances to transport the sick.Give colour coded cards to residents.Those with say blue colours will be alloweed to walk on Sundays. Yellow on Mondays. In an emergency you get special permits from Municipality to disregard colour code.
These are some idea to alleviate Male' congestion.These idea can I'm sure be made better and more refined.
aha! den u hv to waer gas maskz. Y not a rolling sidewalk?
Travelator sounds a brilliant idea worth exploring further...not very difficult to imagine its practicality. I guess all this can be more realistically assessed after Male' local government elections. In the meantime, an imanigative interim Mayor may just be able to sell the idea well in time for the Male' council elections.
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