Dr D K Halder, formerly professor of transport economics, offers his opinion on urbanisation.
BRT no solution to urban chaos 29 Mar 08 (http://dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=OPED&file_name=opd3%2Etxt&counter_img=3)
The other voice: DK Halder | President, National Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies
The flip side of having a BRT in Delhi is evident even before it is operational. That's because successive Indian Governments have followed a policy of putting the cart before the horse when planning urban traffic systems
Instead of controlling the demand what successive governments did was to tinker with superficials. They love to construct flyovers because these are typical short cuts, but not solutions in themselves as flyovers are notorious for transferring traffic congestion from one part of the city to another. The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Delhi purports to create dedicated corridors for buses. But though BRTs have the potential to contribute positively, but, it is not a panacea. The flip side of it has already started glaring itself in the increasing slowdown and inconvenience of boarding and alighting of the commuters using modes which are not enjoying the facility of 'road space reservation'. Will it survive the test of majority-minority pay off ? Dangerous it would be if the other cities, prone to imitate Delhi adopt this solution without proper feasibility study.
The burgeoning Indian automobile industry may represent an inspiring parameter of rapid economic growth and improving lifestyles, but, by the same index, the existence of under-the-weather transport infrastructure signals the lack of it. India's clogged urban streets manifests the irritating dichotomy of a growth model where too many vehicles chase too few roads in an utterly mismanaged transport system. It resembles two front wheels of a vehicle turned in opposite directions.
Very recently, I had the horrible experience of negotiating the thoroughfares of two of India's fastest developing metros: Mumbai and Bangalore. As the vehicle snail-paced through a standstill multitude of office-bound automobiles, one simply shivered at visions of the future. I noticed very few public buses. It suggested how cars were fast displacing modes of mass transportation. The concept of using less space to move more people between points A and B has gone out of the window in contemporary India. The new logic is "if you have economic growth, then flaunt it". Ergo: Cars, more cars.
I wondered whether the raining of "people's cars" challenges the prevailing global wisdom that militates against over-consumption of the earth's resources. Today's governments in India are not distracted by considerations of preserving the planet for future generations. It is therefore no wonder that a transportation nightmare has overwhelmed India's cities. It is not that we are fighting a losing battle. We seem to have quite lost it already.
For decades, the urban transportation systems of India have been plagued by poor planning or, in some cases, the utter lack of it. To begin with, our planners failed to integrate the urban transport system with Land Use Plans that essentially relate to activity locations. The traffic impact of land use has seldom been considered while building urban transportation networks. On the other hand, the age-old transport systems were allowed to buckle under the new land use schemes.
A classic example is the story of our urban satellite towns. Governments, in their zeal to provide "housing" disregard counsel on aligning land use plans with transportation linkages. The traffic impact of the 'product' of a particular type of land use should have been taken into consideration. Such unplanned ventures may reflect "growth" in general parlance, but proves counterproductive in the longer run.
It has to be recognised that transport demand is a 'derived demand'. It is a means to satisfy commuters' final demand, rather, to reach the commuters to 'places in demand'. It is not an end in itself. So, in order to control a chaotic transportation system, we have to 'manage the demand' by controlling land use and not vice versa. This is one reason why I had never subscribed to the idea of vertical expansion of cities and intensification of land use in crowded cities.
In Indian cities, where dominant and para-transit modes of transportation operate, the agencies, both public and private, handling them are allowed to take independent decisions. This often leads to chaos. A classic blunder is played out day in and day out in West Bengal, where the Calcutta Tramways Corporation, a State Government-owned enterprise, plies both tram cars and buses on the same route. This implies that mutually competing modes of public transportation are left free to eat into each other's revenues.
It is apparent that our Governments have shied from expressing overriding priority in a singular mode of mass transportation. It is only in recent times that Mass Rapid Transportation (MRT) has entered the political discourse. Governments have decided to take up MRT projects for their cities.
Unfortunately, nobody has bothered to take a holistic approach to address the urban nightmare of traffic snarls. As this is everybody's problem, each and every limb of society should take part in the de-clogging drive. Way back in 1980, the report of the National Transport Policy Committee had suggested the creation of an apex body to plan and coordinate transport system in all the metros, which has been echo ed by the National Urban Transport Policy 2006 in its recommendation for Unified Metropolitan Transport Authorities in million plus cities. But it was never implemented. The country's first MRT project came up in Calcutta. It missed several deadlines for completion and eventually took more than 20 years to operationalise a north-south system. The original cost multiplied from Rs 140 crore to Rs 1,600 crore. But did Calcutta's traffic problem go away? Not at all, because new problems had come up in the meantime.
The lesson that Calcutta holds out for the metros now going in for MRTs is this: identify the gaps before-hand and bring down the construction have to be identified. Also, the time lag between conception and implementation of a plan has to be brought down to the minimum.
Given the pace of civilisation, an urban sprawl is inevitable. But, this could be given a direction by developing infrastructure that takes into consideration the traffic situation 40 or 50 years ahead. This is what we call perspective planning, which is essentially different from merely building flyovers.
Last, but not least, you cannot solve the urban mess without simultaneously addressing the rural transportation problem. It may sound surprising, but rural India holds out the solution. We need to build smooth rural-urban connectivity and intra-village road networks.
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