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Response to TNRDC With some glib press and public relations skills, the TNRDC management has been weaving an illusion of having created a state of the art freeway. With sweet reasonableness, TNRDC asks residents along the ECR to pay it a toll for the pleasure of even touching their own road. The truth in fact lies elsewhere: residents' and property owners' traditional road has been snatched away from them, some cosmetic changes made to it and they are being asked to pay a toll. See it this way: Your car gets stolen and the thief cleans it up, paints a new colour, puts on new tires and suggests that you pay him a recurring fee for using the 'improved car'. Read on to learn more aspects of this parody.
Aren't the improvements by TNRDC worthy of a toll? No, not for residents. For two reasons. One, the residents had no choice in design and implemetation, nor did they ask for these. The road before TNRDC moved, was serviceable enough. TNRDC 'snatched' from residents this traditionally used road and applied cosmetic changes to milk revenue. And the 'improvements' like signages and buttons are irrelevant to residents as they travel only part distances in the course of living their lives and therefore they have little time to delight in these offerings by TNRDC. Two, such 'improvements' are available to other citizens of the state for free. For example, the toll-free Chengalpattu by-pass is vastly superior to TNRDC's creation in terms of technology, safety and utility. Most of the sensible improvements would in any case have come in the course of time because of incremental technology adoption. Isn't concessional tariff a welcome step? No, even a low tariff binds residents to a levy for a third of a century: TNRDC is authorised to escalate tariff over the coming 30 years. A low tariff now is only a thin end of the wedge. Nowhere in India do residents pay a tariff for the use of a road they have traditionally accessed. Law further holds that even 'patta' [titled] property, if open to unfettered access for 12 years must yield to continuation of that usage. While that is the case for private accesses, it is extra-ordinary for TNRDC to have appropriated a public road and claim a toll. Mustn't residents let TNRDC collect a toll for capital spent and maintenance? Sweet though the argument sounds, TNRDC's present scheme penalises only 3 and 4 wheel users passing a toll point even though they may hace traversed just 3kM of the ECR. On the other hand, a lorry running 8 laps from within sight of one toll point to within sight of another pays no toll. Two wheelers pay no toll. What it all amounts to is that TNRDC collects only from the helpless and is incapable of devising a method to collect from all. So 3 and 4 wheel owners subsidise all others. TNRDC must examine how sound this is in law. What about vehicle passes as a solution? A vehicle pass can only be an interim solution. How about a resident returning from the railway station in a taxi? How about a resident who breaks a leg and calls for a taxi to get to a hospital. How about the friends of a resident's child who want to visit for playing with her? How about resident's relatives? Visiting relatives even in army camps and industrial townships and Kalpakkam campus is free of charge. Why should residents between the toll points suffer the indignity of having their friends and relations pay to visit them? Why should their property values fall because the toll is seen by a potential buyer as a never ending levy? The toll on residents isolates them unlawfully. The only solution to all these disturbing questions is the ERPOA Plan or something similar and not reduced tariffs or vehicle passes. Why should two wheeler owners be concerned about the toll? Today, two wheelers are exempted. Very cleverly, they have been separated and lulled. One day they too may be brought under the net. Even if they are not, why should two wheeler owning residents on the ECR assume they will not buy a 3 or 4 wheeler in the next 30 years that the TNRDC has the monopoly on the ECR? Every one hopes to grow and most everyone does. It is reasonable to expect you too will graduate to an auto or a car. At the minimum, you dream your children at least will buy a car. Do you want to leave this toll as a legacy to your children? When they grow up, TNRDC will still be collecting -- a sum much larger than it does now.	What should TNRDC do now? TNRDC may have erred in preparing its business model - in spite of residents informing it during surveys of their strong feelings. This may in fact be a classic case of top-down planning. Be that as it may. In the absence of a non-porous, sealable facility from which levy can be collected without effort, TNRDC must now find a way of separating those that gain from the ECR benefits of time and distance saved, from those that do not. How can that be done? There are many ways and TNRDC must surely have access to minds that can think a scheme up. ERPOA on its part proposes an elegant scheme, that can be a total solution to the problem, remove the discord and generate stress free revenue for TNRDC. ERPOA calls it the ERPOA Plan. The Plan acknowledges that the ECR is a genuine alternate of advantage to travelers between Chennai and Pondicherry. Their other option is to travel via Old Mahabalipuram Road partly or the GST Road entirely. In either case, the ECR is a preferred alternative. Even today these travelers willingly pay the toll. The ERPOA Plan is simply this: At either toll points -- Chennai and Pondicherry -- note down and flash to the other point, the numbers of all vehicles entering it. If a vehicle from the list emerges at the other end within 24 hours, it has truly traversed the entire ECR and is therefore liable to a toll at the point of exit. Vehicles that emerges whose number is not listed is also that of a residents'. Vehicles that do not emerge at a toll point are obviously a residents' or had traveled only a part distance. TNRDC may argue that this will enable residents to traverse most of the way and not pay a toll. But then what is happening now? A public carrier can do 10 trips a day between say Kanathur and Marakkanam, a distance of about 100kM and a total of 1000kM in all. TNRDC has no means to collect a toll from this operation. That is a price TNRDC must pay for not having the foresight to create a sealable alternate facility. The ERPOA Plan admits even non-residents into the ECR without a toll. Many of them are relatives of residents. Some may even be residents coming home in a taxi or an auto-rickshaw. They may be visitors to amusement parks or a hospital or a school or a place of work between the toll points . The ERPOA Plan allows all these, toll free access. The Plan collects toll only from genuine inter city travelers. Why residents distrust TNRDC? Because TNRDC is playing games with them. Because at the highest level, it displays arrogance. Mr.Rohit Modi asked a petitioning resident why he did not consider shifting residence or take to a two wheeler or learn from the citizens of Singapore or Malaysia, quite forgetting that Constitutions differ in countries and in any case, officials there are usually civilised in behaviour. He also mumbled at a citizen's meet that 'there was an alternate route for residents' but later had a TNRDC spokesman tell the Hindu 'that an alternate road was not mandatory.' Because TNRDC falsely announces that it was helpless and that it was doing only the Government's bidding -- this, while the Secretary to the Govt. confirmed that TNRDC has ample operational freedom to charge anything below the indicated tariff, even Rs.Zero. Because TNRDC is insincere and unsympathetic. Above all,because residents believe TNRDC is adopting a 'do-nothing' strategy in the hope residents will tire and succumb and pay.