Varying road widths along the same stretch make effective handling of traffic volume difficult in Ahmedabad.
A cursory glimpse of the city’s road network will show that of the 2,436 km of active roads, 61% are single-lane roads, 15% are intermediate lanes, and 12% are two lanes..
Only 1% of the road length in the city includes six-lane or eight-lane roads. While speaking of road hierarchy, 347 km length of roads (14.2%) is taken up by ring and radial roads, 923 km length by sub-arterial and collector roads, and around 1,166 km by other roads..
A senior official of the roads department said that one of the unchanging problems of Ahmedabad roads is that roads don’t have consistent widths for arterial, sub-arterial, or ring roads. The traffic during peak hours faces bottlenecks of varying widths along a whole road stretch..
The other major problem with varying widths is the often encroached road shoulders. On the flip side, wider roads, which provide higher manoeuvring space for vehicles, do not ensure safety..
In an urban setting, wider roads also permit cars to go faster, thus improving the likelihood of crashes and injuries..
A recent survey by the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) of 26 primary roads in the city showed that usable footpaths were available for just 45.3% of roads. On the remaining roads, pedestrians had to walk on the peripheries of mixed traffic lanes..
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