Tathagata Chatterji - Nano and Metro India

“Nano & Metro India – The Impact on Urban Transportation”, Editorial page leader article in The Statesman, February 24, 2008

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2008-02-24&usrsess=1&clid=3&id=218968

Thousands of sleek, little Tata-Nanos are likely to jostle for urban road space within a year. Nano boasts a brilliant design innovation for the all-weather travel requirements of the budget-conscious Indian family. However, the very affordability of the car has raised certain critical questions: If the roads are clogged by millions of new cars, will there be enough space to drive? How does one manage the legitimate aspirations of the Indian family in the urban context?
The future of mobility in Indian cities, already teeming with bumper to bumper traffic and exasperated commuters, needs urgently to be addressed as the country moves towards an increasingly urban future along with the structural shift in the economy ~ from agriculture to industry and service.
With 285 million people, urban India now accounts for 28 per cent of the country’s population, 62 per cent of the GDP and the bulk of the car purchases. Between 1981 and 2001, on an average, the population in the six metro cities increased by 1.8 times but the number of vehicles rose six-fold. In the Delhi-NCR area, 420 million man-hours are lost every month because of traffic congestion, according to ASSOCHAM. With 1,421 cars per square kilometer, Kolkata now has a higher car density than the vastly more affluent Berlin.
There has been a spatial shift as well with the IT and the IT-enabled sector emerging as the main factors of the urban economy and frequently locating to self-contained business complexes in the fringe areas of big cities. Such sleepy residential suburbs of the eighties as Gurgaon, NOIDA or SaltLake, have now overtaken traditional business areas like Connaught Place or Dalhousie Square as corporate destinations of choice.
This combined effect of “suburbanization” of the urban economy and the rising road congestion had compelled the state governments to construct highways and flyovers, replicating the American urban model of car dependent, low-density garden suburbs of the 1950s. However, as the Americans found out the hard way, by the 1970s, the ever-increasing freeways resulted in increased use of cars. This led to rising energy cost, pollution and travel time. Delhi is witness to a similar phenomenon today.
Amongst the Indian cities, Delhi has the most extensive roadspace along with an elaborate programme of flyover construction. Over the past 10 years, road length increased by 20 per cent, but cars increased by 132 per cent. The ambitious Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway appears to have crossed the carrying capacity estimated for the year 2016 by the time it was inaugurated this year. The 32-lane toll plaza ~ supposedly the largest in Asia ~ has earned the sobriquet, “parking plaza”. Elsewhere, traffic moves fast on the flyovers but gets stuck in bottlenecks down the road.
Compare this with New York, London, Paris or Singapore ~ the high temples of international finance ~ cities where people get around on foot, by taxi or via mass transit. Zurich, Melbourne, Copenhagen ~ which frequently tops the urban quality of living index ~ a sort of ATP ranking of the cities, have a dense urban core, pedestrian-friendly streets, a network of high quality mass transit and policies which discourage private cars in core areas. In parts of Tokyo, one cannot own a car unless one owns a private parking space. London introduced congestion charges in city centre areas in 2003. Since then the volume of traffic has been reduced by 21 per cent and delays shortened by two minutes per kilometer.
The present gridlocked mess in India is the outcome of short sighted and uncoordinated policies on land use and transportation. According to a Centre for Science & Environment study, a bus carrying 40 passengers occupies about 2.5 times the roadspace than a car with one or two persons and, at the same time, pays 2.6 times higher tax as well. So the poor end up paying in terms of higher travel time and cost. The real estate costs are sky-high but a single parking slot that occupies 23 square metres costs only Rs 10 for a day, whereas a shop or desk space are charged full commercial rates. Diesel subsidies meant for the trucks and buses are gobbled up by chauffer-driven limousines.
Public transport is chronically mismanaged and inadequate. The term ‘mass transport’ in India, barring the minuscule Metro service, brings up images of rickety tin-pot buses menacing down the roads or commuters precariously hanging for life from overcrowded suburban trains. In the glittering cyber city of Gurgaon, the only option for mobility for those without a private vehicle is to hop onto a stretched auto-rickshaw with dozen other hapless souls.
It need not have been so. Mumbai and Kolkata inherited a fine urban-regional structure with an elaborate suburban railway network. It is another matter, of course, that subsequent capacity augmentation did not match the population increase. Even now, however, the two cities lead India in public transportation. The distinguished architect, Charles Correa, has pointed out that Mumbai was planned by the British railway engineers as they laid the tracks first and development followed afterwards.
The same was true for Kolkata. It is linked by rail to its industrial and residential hinterland from Bandel to Budge Budge. The planning of SaltLake was a departure from this concept and provided a road dependent spatial pattern. The new Metro will hopefully bring rail connectivity about half a century later. Within Kolkata proper, there was a feeder network of tramways providing clean and affordable mass transport.
Today it has been virtually destroyed by what can be described as “vehicle-centric thinking”. Many routes have been withdrawn; even the median verge has disappeared owing to widening of roads with scant regard for safety. Half the roads are perpetually blocked by parked cars; on the rest, shuttle auto-rickshaws run amok, spewing the polluting NOx in their frenzied spree to overtake each other. Allowing shuttle autos along tram tracks defies the logic of urban transportation.
In cities across Europe and America ~ Athens, Berlin, London, Prague, San Francisco ~ the tramway network is going through a period of resurgence with new routes and system upgrades to reduce congestion and carbon emission. In the crowded Zentrum area of Frankfurt, theU-bahn (trams) acts as feeder to the S-bahn (metro) and often share the same platform, for ease of passenger movement. In Singapore, people change over to LRT, where the Metro ends.
Integrated mass transit is not the monopoly of the affluent West. Jaime Lerner in Curitiba, Brazil and Enrique Peñalosa in Bogota, Columbia, had set examples as respective mayors, by transforming their cities through visionary leadership and policies that benefit the people. Both cities are now considered as global benchmarks in urban management. Likewise in India, the Delhi Metro and the Indore bus service demonstrate efficient project implementation.
There is no denying that cars provide the most convenient form of personal mobility in low density areas. In big cities though, mass transit should take precedence. The pattern of land-use needs to be coordinated with transportation planning, as emphasized in the National Transportation Policy of 2006. The crux of the challenge lies in coordinated policy implementation, involving stakeholders, including the Centre, the states and local governments. Failing this, the dream-car of the upwardly mobile Indian household will forever remain stuck at the traffic light.

The writer is an architect and urban planner