Hurtling into chaos with demonic rise in vehicles on roads

Last year, the Indian automobile industry churned out around two million cars, 12 million two-wheelers and 0.5 million commercial vehicles. By 2020, this output is expected to rise almost fourfold. Unless most of the expansion is for export, which is highly unlikely, we city-dwellers in India are facing a horrendous future.

Imagine the urban scenario by then: traffic jams starting from residential areas, gridlocks lasting hours, road rage incidents galore starting with parking tiffs with your neighbours, deaths due to traffic accidents reaching epidemic proportions, atmosphere so polluted as to require gas masks, noise levels so high as to necessitate ear-muffs...

Granted, the automobile industry is a force multiplier in employment creation. Also agreed that the automobile sector leads to growth of associated industries such as materials, components, electronics, etc and creates a huge tax base. But is it worth the heavy price we have to pay as collateral damage?

It is not just unfortunate but ridiculous that we chose to opt for the US lifestyle model as the paradigm for our urban transport development. The contrasts in the basic parameters are so vast. The US has seven times our total area and one fifth of our population. They chose the automobile as the preferred personal mode of transport because of the distances, the substantial reserves of oil (to begin with) and more than ample space in their cities to accommodate large areas for wide road networks.

None of these conditions prevail in India. We have very little oil reserves and have to import over 70 per cent of the present demand involving a severe drain on our forex reserves. This will only get worse as oil prices are bound to escalate in the future. Our cities are old, crammed with people, have narrow, tortuous streets and are clogged with unimaginably mixed traffic and stray animals. There is little or no space for widening the city streets because of the buildings bordering them.

Even inter-city highways are difficult to lay because the agriculturists owning the surrounding land are reluctant to part with it, as has been amply proved by the experience of land acquisition delays for the National Highway programme  In short, every card in the deck is stacked against the automobile as the favoured means of transport.

The demonic rise of the automobile industry in India in the last two decades can be attributed to two main factors. One is the lifting of restrictions on the industry in terms of capacity, foreign collaboration,  FDI, etc following the economic liberalisation post 1991. This led to a host of manufacturers from the developed countries trooping in as they sensed a rapidly growing new market which would compensate the stagnant markets back home.

The second and most crucial factor was the introduction of the installment payment scheme for purchase of automobiles. This enabled the automobile market to move from a thin slice of population who were rich enough to pay the full price up front to a large middle class who could now afford the purchase on a deferred basis. With public transport almost non-existent, this paved the way for an explosion in demand for automobiles and the situation we have today.

Automobile exhaust may not be a major contributor to the total quantity of greenhouse gas emission (GHG) from India today but will become a significant portion as the number of vehicles on our roads  multiply four or five-fold a decade from now. This will pose a big problem for us in keeping up to our international commitments to keep down the GHG in order to minimise climate change.

There is no getting away from it. We must think out of the box to meet our transport needs according to our patterns of population, infrastructure and resources and not ape the follies of the West. Here are some feasible solutions:

- Promote public transport in our cities. We have taken a right step, incidentally ahead of the Chinese for once, in implementing the Metros in our big cities. In addition, we can consider reviving tramways but using modern, high speed trams, where the right of way still exists, like in Kolkota and light rail systems such as monorails as feeders to the Metros.

-City bus systems need to be rejigged to become feeders to the Metro and light rail networks. Arterial roads should have dedicated bus lanes while city interiors with narrow roads can be serviced by a frequent ‘up and down’ or circular service of electric mini-vans.

- Discourage the use of personal vehicles in downtown areas and business districts by such means as heavy entry taxes, banning of roadside parking, hefty parking fees, etc.

- Transform shopping areas into pedestrian zones and provide moving footpaths or public electric vans. Permit supply vehicles to ply only late at night and early morning. Promote the use of cycling in residential and peripheral  areas of the city by providing dedicated cycling lanes.

- Stop spending scarce city funds on flyovers and underpasses which facilitate motorists. The more pain a motorist feels in negotiating city roads in his personal vehicle, the less likely he will take it out. Spend that money, instead, on facilities which promote  public transport such as more buses and vans, bus and tram shelters, transport information systems, pathways, etc.

- The government should seriously consider a step-wise ban on deferred repayment loans from banks for the purchase of personal-use automobiles starting with SUVs and big cars which occupy too much of scarce street space.