Bengaluru second most congested city in SE Asia

Bengaluru is the second most congested city among major metros of Southeast Asia, including Delhi, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Hanoi and Manila, warns a recent survey. And the situation will only get worse if measures are not taken to check it.

The survey by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) measures the response from 300 commuters in each of the growing cities — New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru — and compares them with indicators from global cities in Southeast Asia.

According to the analysis, road congestion in peak hours in the four Indian cities averages at 149%, making commuting that much harder. Commuters spend 1.5 times longer to travel a given distance in peak hours when compared with non-peak hour travel time.

The survey shows that 89% of the respondents in Bengaluru and Kolkata plan to buy a car in the next five years, which is set to worsen the situation. However, reducing peak hour congestion is a huge challenge considering that about half of the population in these cities plans to buy cars in the next five years.

Congestion itself is not the end of the road as it throws up several other problems like pollution, delay, cost, extra oil combustion, traffic accidents, direct economic loss and vehicle loss, which come under social cost.

The social cost of congestion stands at Rs 60,000 crore annually for Delhi while the number for Bengaluru stands at about Rs 37,000 crore.

The BCG survey, commissioned by app-based cab aggregator Uber, suggests that ride-sharing along with sound mass transit facility can save commuters from traffic jams and check the increasing social cost caused by congestion.

Ridesharing promises point-to-point travel, a facility that can’t be provided by public transport. The share option introduced in Ola and Uber has brought down road congestion in Delhi by 31% followed by Mumbai (27%), Kolkata (19%) and Bangalore 17%.

Interestingly, the survey report said 52% of those who want to own the vehicle were ready to give up their dream if they get good ridesharing facilities. It also suggested that apps bridging multimodal transport will encourage more and more people to prefer public transport and ridesharing over their own vehicles.