For a highly populated developing country with little space, India’s single-minded pursuit of the automobile has set back its urban mobility and the quality of life in its cities. To make our cities ‘world-class’, liveable and locally responsive, cars need to be discouraged. We need to adopt modes of transport that can take care of a majority of our urban trips, are affordable, networkable, allow easy transfers and are in demand. Let’s also check out how to hack the tremendous efficiencies caught up in a lack of enforcement.
The elephant on the street
As a country, we have not been able to move our people; it is still not easy to get around in a typical Indian city. In the capital city of Delhi, cars move a mere 6% of the population, but occupy a massively disproportionate 75-85% of the street width. Not surprisingly, public transportation budgets are structured to primarily serve the automobile. For a highly populated developing country with little space, India’s single-minded pursuit of the automobile has compromised its urban mobility and the quality of life in its cities. In addition to crowding out other modes of transportation, including walking and cycling, a sea of parked cars separate buildings from urban activity, automobiles speeding through walled-off streets leave little space for pedestrians and flyovers wipe out historical street-life. Ground floors of residential buildings are surrendered to the automobile, forcing people to move up into modern citadels, disconnecting from streetlife. Cars, originally meant to connect, are increasingly dividing our cities into socialislands, compromising the very idea of cities as places of connected and beneficial co-existence.
But these are also opportune times. Today, there are tailwinds of sustainable economic growth, innovative precedents and strong sociopolitical will. This is the time for governments, citizens, developers, engineers and designers to advance urban mobility, re-stitch cities and establish quality urban life.
‘Mobility’ helps a citizen access the physical network of people, places and resources. Our mobility needs to include access to education, jobs, essential commodities and friends/ family. Mobility increases a company and a city’s competitiveness by casting a wider net for human and material resources. It allows people to be able to choose where they want to live, work and play. Mobility creates synergy by connecting demand and supply. It ultimately helps cities be larger than the sum of their parts by organising themselves into inclusive and connected networks. ‘Hacks’ are strategies for low-hanging fruit and are logically attracted to system inefficiencies. Hacks can work inside out on our cities to make them smarter, rather than having to invest in new cities. Hacks leverage history, investments and existing communities to create valuable, bottom-up networks.
As much as we still love our cars, if we are to get around in our dense and populated cities, private car ownership needs to be immediately discouraged
Today, Delhi is the world’s 12th densest city and the 2nd most populated. No developed cities exist close to this density and size. We barely have enough space for our people, let alone the inefficient modes of transportation and infrastructure needed for them. There are 19.5 cars for every 1000 people in India as compared to a whopping 77 cars in hilly Hong Kong, 83 in China, 206 in Thailand, 459 in Japan and 797 in the US. India has low car ownership compared to many other countries. If the current car population was merely to double or triple – something very possible – it would first cause even more road-rage and then bring traffic to a grinding halt.
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In Delhi, streets make up a low 21% of the land area and are set up for congestion. This is typical in other cities and new. private developments, where developable land is maximised. To make matters worse, neighbourhoods continue to shut themselves and their streets from the city, citing security concerns and turning themselves into gated communities and mega-blocks compromising the connectivity of a city. If street capacity was now to be increased for cars, if even possible, it would simply encourage demand for more cars. According to Dario Hidalgo, the brain behind the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Colombia, “Increasing roads and flyovers to ease traffic congestion is like buying bigger pants to control obesity.”
As much as we still love our cars, if we are to get around in our dense and populated cities, private car ownership needs to be immediately discouraged. This can be done through policy initiatives such as temporary and overnight parking charges, congestion pricing, employer incentives for commuting via transit or ride sharing and of course providing more modes of mobility. Some cities like Lyon, Zurich, Copenhagen, Birmingham and London are already showing signs of outgrowing cars, lured by benefits in efficiency, quality of life and reclaimed space. More efficient modes of transportation, like transit, walking and bicycles, need to be given a good chunk of the space cars today occupy on and off the road. Such street transformations are in play around the world (one great repository of this information is a non-profit called Urb-i), with streets becoming a part of city-life rather than existing only as dangerous asphalt corridors for cars.
It is not hard to realise that a significant number of cars will and should be around for some time to come, given the lack of alternatives, our current dependence on cars, their combination or utility and comfort, decreasing costs/km with technology and sharing, and availability of clean fuel engines. Their use can be optimised.
Private cars sit idle 90-95% of the time. In addition, the millennial+ generations have a decreasing desire to own, drive, park and maintain cars, spurring the popularity of radiotaxis. Ride sharing is a logical advancement of underleveraged capacity of cars: 70% of cars in India have a single person driving each one. Examples of existing services are Ola, Uber and Bla Bla Car in India. Our cities need to designate spaces in the public and private realm for a range of such means of transportation. Accessible pods of shared cars should be part of a city layout. A portion of parking requirements in buildings can easily be dedicated to such services. Radio taxis, some parked in these dedicated parking spaces, could be made available with solutions such as scanable QR codes to link to waiting cars.
Urban planning should focus on bringing people and places together rather than merely adding urban transport infrastructure
Bus Tedi Mat Khadi Karo [Don’t park the bus crooked at the bus stop]
Optimising car usage can only go so far in improving urban mobility. Delhi’s 2011 transportation share by mode, which is also called the modal-share or modal-split, stated that 48% travel by public transit (18% metro and 30% buses), 33% take non-motorised transport (12% cycle and 21% walk) and 19% use private motorised-transport (6% car, 13% 2-wheelers). These numbers show that so far we have invested in the least efficient means of mobility and that we need a paradigm shift in our priorities.
Gliding under and over a sea of gridlocked honking traffic, the Delhi Metro defines a new paradigm in efficiency (99% punctuality), pride and air-conditioned public space to beat the 45-degrees celsius heat. Supporting the 2nd most populous city in the world after Tokyo, the Delhi Metro carries 2.7 million people every day. The Metro cuts through backbreaking traffic, dented cars and road rage. It gets people to work, students to their schools, travellers to their buses, trains and planes and foodies to Old Delhi, all while preventing greenhouse gas emissions and earning carbon credits. The new Pink and Magenta lines will carry another two million riders every day, powered by clean solar energy.
Buses, the other major component of public transit, carry 30% of Delhi’s traffic or 4.5 million people/day; almost double the traffic of the Metro. Bus rapid transit systems at ` 100-150 million/km are also less than a tenth of the cost of a metro system, which few cities can afford. For cities large to small, buses are the critical spine of mobility allowing geographical reach, capacity, cost effectiveness, space-efficiency and relative ease of implementation. More buses, with better modal integration, with more comfortable and luxurious options, and employer-driven incentives to encourage usage, are the primary solution to urban mobility despite the halfhearted attempt at and bad memories of the 2008 Delhi Bus Rapid Transport initiative. However successful, the Delhi bus system with its approximately 5500 buses is severely underprovided. This bus shortage also creates a gap and artificially encourages other lowercapacity and clutter-causing modes of transport, e.g. autorickshaws for schoolchildren and hop-on hop-off ‘tempos’ along major streets and metro stations.
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Walking and bicycling, also called nonmotorised transport or NMT, is the most used means across Indian cities despite its current poor infrastructure. The average Indian city is in a position to make a majority of its trips via NMT, given the option. Bike-sharing in China is already giving ride-sharing taxis a run for its money. NMT requires minimal investment, is pollution-free and keeps people fit. Maximising walking and bicycling should be the first step towards mobility for any city.
Yet there exist few bicycle lanes and almost half of the capital’s streets have no sidewalks. Data shows that due to cramped and unorganised space, more than 60% of fatalities involve pedestrians and cyclists amounting to 90,000 out of 1.5 lakh annual deaths on our streets. In effect, the existing 30-50% of the population of walkers and cyclists in the country are subsidising road infrastructure for car-owners. The walkers and cyclists are paying with not only a lack of travel space, congested streets and increased travel times, but with their wallets, health and safety.
70-80% of 36-year-old urbanites in India are obese by WHO standards; 74% of urbanites are prone to cardiovascular diseases; a heart attack claims 80 lives a day in Mumbai and one every 33-seconds nationally. Many of these appalling statistics exist due to a lack of physical activity. Getting around on foot and bicycle can help provide the recommended 30-minutes of moderate daily physical activity to the vast majority of the population. Our cities and buildings need to be ‘active-design’ enabled, for which some cities like New York have proactively implemented design-guidelines.
Continuous walking and strategic cycling space should connect transit stations, residential neighbourhoods and commercial centres. Parking should be provided as a districtresource and not a building-resource so as to increase walkability and optimise development. Pedestrian-priority and car-free districts should be created. Workplaces should be spread out, zoned across cities and maximised for mixeduse development so that most daily destinations are within walking and cycling distances. Urban planning should focus on bringing people and places together rather than merely adding urban transport infrastructure to increase the movement of people and goods.
As per Dr. Sumit Chowdhury of Gaia Smart Cities, “The strength of a network lies in its links more than its nodes.” In addition to NMT and transit, diverse modes of transportation are required for end-to-end connectivity, catering to different distances and cost brackets. These include taxis, rickshaws and other forms of high-occupancy shared vehicles. All these modes of transportation should be seamlessly connected as a network between places of living, working and playing.
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Autorickshaws, ideally electric or CNG, can provide short neighbourhood trips and first- and last-kilometre connectivity. These can act as alternate feeders to mass transit systems, simultaneously reducing the need to own private vehicles. Autorickshaws are cheaper and, at lower speeds, are safer. India will become a 100% e-vehicle nation by 2030, according to Piyush Goyal, Power Minister. E-rickshaws are taking off in popularity and these need supporting infrastructure like charging/battery-swap locations in places like metro stations and petrol pumps.
The space outside the Metro stations is a critical urban junction where travellers switch to other modes of transportation. Currently, these station areas resemble angry beehives with a diversity of vehicles wrestling their way in and out. It is especially important to get the design right in situations where metro stations are built on and beside existing major streets so as to minimise impact on street-capacity and functioning. Direct pedestrian crossovers/skywalks should be constructed to all major developments and destinations within the catchment area. Travellers can then walk to/ from the metro station directly rather than using motorised transport to cover short distances and cluttering up the street and station area.
Getting around on foot and bicycle can help provide the recommended 30-minutes of moderate daily physical activity
A number of current initiatives need to be acknowledged. Delhi Metro will introduce multi-modal integration in 68 of its upcoming stations under Phase III. Delhi Metro is going to develop areas within a 300-metre radius of such stations offering dedicated spaces for pedestrians, motorised and non-motorised vehicles. A pilot programme will test a fleet of e-rickshaws with dedicated spots by a station, wherein commuters can pay with their Metro cards. A number of cities and companies have signed up with radio-taxis and radioautorickshaws, like Mumbai with Ola and Yatra.com with Jugnoo to facilitate last kilometre commuting options for travellers to and from train stations, bus stations and hotels, among others. The Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure (Planning & Engineering) Centre (UTTIPEC) released globally progressive Street Guidelines for Delhi in 2009; these look beyond streets as vehicle corridors via integrated goals of mobility, accessibility, comfort, safety and ecology. A 2016 High Powered Committee on Delhi traffic decongestion under Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu, the then Minister for Urban Development, called for a paradigm shift from car-centric to people-centric planning. This report suggests policy interventions to restrain the private vehicle population, relies on transit for urban mobility and says no to more flyovers and gated communities. The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), under the MoUD, seeks to reduce pollution and encourage NMT by providing walking and bicycling infrastructure. However, its implementation is yet to be seen.
‘Build it and they will come’ is the phrase. But if proper enforcement, education and management are overlooked, the most brilliant or basic solutions can become white elephants, taking up valuable street space. The few sidewalks and bike lanes in Indian cities are usually littered with open manhole covers, electricity boxes, sign boards, street lights, unauthorised parking, commercial encroachment, people sleeping, stray animals, trees and bus stops, discouraging most pedestrians and forcing the few enthusiasts to walk on the street. If a bus makes a ‘teda’ (crooked) diagonal stop across two lanes and you have vendors bribing their way into the street, there is an immediate encroachment of street-network capacity. Likewise, a lack of policing of driving basics like clogged street intersections despite traffic-lights, driving on the opposite side of the street, using the entire street width as a right-turn lane, a lack of lane discipline and double-parking or parking in travel lanes out of convenience can dramatically decrease the efficiency of our streets. A considerable amount of mobility capacity and performance is stuck in a lack of enforcement and education. This low-hanging fruit needs to be hacked and freed first, before we spend valuable resources on additional capacity.
Sameer Chadha is an urban designer, architect, and cityenthusiast. He helps shape memorable environments that provide a good quality of life. His current focus is on impacting city development through empowering stakeholders and writing on urban issues.
All illustrations - Sameer Chadha
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