A Problem, A Solution : Traffic

A road was widened because traffic issues on that road were increasing with years. There used to be big trees on both sides of the road that provided passers by shade from scorching sun and rainfall. Lot of these trees were more than 100 years old, some even older. Trees were cut amidst protests from environment groups. Road was widened.

The times further to that saw opening of couple of famous food/beverages outlets by the sides, adding to existing good enough crowd pulling joints. Crowd is even more. Though road is widened, but so are the cars and two-wheelers sizes and their nos. Though there are yellow lines, marking the parking area by the road side, bigger size vehicles sometimes overshoot that by 2-4 feets.

Effective roadsize is still the same, perhaps lesser than what it used to be, people density on road around the joints has only increased. If something is not there, it's those trees.

There are other places also in same city, where roads sizes have been widened more than double, a lovely strech of around 2Kms, now doesn't have a single tree to give protect from rain/sun. Since road is quite wide now, average speed of people driving by has increased a lot, making crossing difficult for old and young people. This road passes through residential areas, school and there is only one crossing around half km. from one end, that forces people to drive in wrong directions, causing risk to not only themselves but others. You may not mind taking a U turn of less than a km, but what you do when you have one opening is 50-100 mts from you in wrong direction and right direction is a U turn of around 3 kms and it's part of your daily route couple of times a day. Not only this adds to more fuel expenditure, but at times causes more expenditures of time and money also for people.