Disentangling urban transport

Both supply and demand sides need fixing

The country is well on the way to giving itself a fairly credible metro rail system in its large cities in a relatively short span of time. In around 15 years, that is by 2014, over 300 km of the rapid transit facility will have been constructed for a substantial Rs 75,000 crore or around 1.5 per cent of GDP. While this will do much to cater to the need for high-density commute to and from city centres, it will take the country no nearer to finding a solution to unbearable congestion on urban roads, which will get worse with every passing day. So a credible solution, which does not exist even on paper today, is desperately needed. The first step must be to create feeder services to metro rail accesses so that the heavy investment made in them is put to good use. In fact, an essential element in the solution must be an integrated multimodal transport system with a single system of ticketing so that there can be several legs to a journey. The resultant quick interchanges will save time.

 

But it is not possible to take metro rail to every corner of a city whose existing roads can be put to the best possible use through a metro bus system that runs on CNG/LNG and is clean and regular. It is also vitally necessary to make space for people to walk and cycle safely and briskly. This will simply recognise what a lot of poor people (their numbers will increase as rural to urban migration continues apace) in our cities are already doing at great inconvenience and risk to themselves. But buses, cycles and pavements will keep making greater demands on a critical resource, road space, whose supply is severely limited. A smart system will have to be devised to control demand that is primarily led by private cars whose numbers are burgeoning in emerging economies even as developed societies go easy on buying new cars.

So, while a sensible public transport system is necessary and must come first (people need an alternative to invariably using their cars), a rational private transport system must follow in tandem for the entire system to deliver. In the first place, India’s cities need an economically and ecologically justifiable tax on the use of cars. A smart system that treats different types of cars differently — large versus small, fuel-efficient versus inefficient, and petrol versus diesel-powered — and can distinguish between use of private vehicles in peak and non-peak hours, and in city centres, business districts, and local neighbourhoods, must be put in place. Increasingly, across the world but particularly in Europe, cars are being disallowed in city centres and major shopping areas. Even in the US, which has had a long love affair with cars, things are changing. Iconic Broadway, in New York’s Manhattan, is now a virtually pedestrian and cycling zone. Singapore, which has an extremely efficient public transport system, has long made it very costly to own a private car and drive it into city centre. The world has already moved down a one-way street. India must follow suit or pay through chaos and automobile exhaust-induced ill health in its cities.