A little over 48 hours after the new Porvorim elevated corridor was thrown open to traffic after having been opened with much fanfare, the Goa government has decided to shut it down again -- well, almost. In a notification issued on Sunday evening, the Public Works Department ordered the shutting of the entry and exits of the new Porvorim elevated corridor on the Alto-Betim side as a temporary measure “to assess and monitor the actual traffic movement, pattern, congestion levels and operation of the elevated corridor until further notice.”
As a result, until better sense prevails, the new elevated corridor will only be open for traffic from Mapusa that is heading beyond Panaji either towards the Old Goa bypass or towards Bambolim and beyond. Traffic from Mapusa to Panaji can no longer use the flyover, nor can traffic from Porvorim that wishes to use the Atal Setu. Also, two-wheelers have been banned on the new elevated corridor, possibly forever.
What we are witnessing is the train-wreck of decision-making playing out live before our eyes. The touted 60% of traffic using the Porvorim elevated corridor will, for the foreseeable future, be roughly 0.6%. All because the design of entries and exits has been faulty. And this isn’t just about the design at the Neo-Majestic end of the Porvorim elevated corridor.
Right from Patradevi up to the Zuari bridge there isn’t a single properly designed point where one can smoothly join or exit a highway. All that we have are random narrow gaps between the main carriageway and the accompanying service road, which have been sold to road users as exits and entries. This is especially apparent at the GMC junction in Bambolim, the Guirim junction, the Mapusa Tar junction, the Peddem junction, the entries and exits for those wishing to either enter or exit the highway before and after the Karaswada junction, the Colvale junction and beyond.
Traffic seeking to join the highway has no space to come up to speed before merging with existing traffic, while traffic exiting the highway needs to come to a complete halt before switching on to the service road.
All of the above problematic points of merger and exit have been sites of horrific crashes -- Guirim, where a senior government officer lost his life after his abrupt merger caused a vehicle already on the flyover to crash into him; at Bambolim where vehicles already on the highway have crashed into those wishing to merge resulting in multiple fatal and non-fatal crashes that have become a common occurrence and Karaswada where every evening the narrow gap means long queues of vehicles jostling for space to join or exit the highway.
The only place where one can experience a smooth merge is where traffic from the Old Goa bypass arm of the Atal Setu joins the main Santa Cruz-Porvorim lanes, allowing drivers a good 100m or so to get up to speed, check for traffic and merge with existing traffic on the bridge.
One would think that if the government is going to spend thousands of crores on highways, flyovers and bridges, they would spend at least a fraction of that on hiring a competent road engineer to design the entry and exit points.
What the newly built highways really need is a complete redesign of the entry and exit points, allowing a gap of at least 100 metres to give vehicles joining or exiting the main highway sufficient time and space to do so safely.
