How cities can boost green mobility

Cities are responsible for 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the transportation sector accounting for 1/3rd of it. As countries like India and China urbanise rapidly, carbon dioxide emissions from the transport sector are expected to increase. To achieve global net-zero emission aspirations, emissions from urban transportation need to decline rapidly by 2050. Achieving this will require policies that encourage shifts towards more sustainable modes of transport, along with the establishment of infrastructure to support low-emission vehicles.

However, existing urban transportation systems are highly inequitable in terms of access, mobility and exposure to the harms of transport. For instance, consider congestion, air pollution and road accident fatalities, which are among the most important challenges confronting urban transport in India. Widely used approaches to ease congestion include the construction of flyovers and roads.

However, academic research shows that increases in road and highway capacity tend to lead to increases in vehicle travel, attract latent demand for vehicle purchase and usage, and reduce funding available for public transport initiatives. Cities like Seoul and San Francisco are bringing down old flyovers to make more space for people. Spending on flyovers benefits a small proportion of the population that tends to travel in private vehicles, while a significant proportion of India’s urban poor continues to rely on public transport, walking and cycling for urban mobility.

A recent study published in Nature Sustainability shows that the lowest-income decile in India suffers nine times as many normalised premature deaths from air pollution as the highest-income decile. Higher-income households cause more pollution because of higher consumption and transportation mode choices. Higher-income households are also able to mitigate the problem to an extent by purchasing air purifiers.

The story of fatal road accidents is no different. Two-wheelers, pedestrians and cyclists, modes of transport more likely to be used by the poor, accounted for 57% of all road traffic deaths in India in 2019. In contrast, people who travel in light motor vehicles (cars, taxis, vans) accounted for 16% of traffic deaths. Additionally, there exist significant inter-city disparities in urban transport provision in India, with a lion’s share of government spending on urban transport going to metropolitan cities. This is despite the fact that smaller cities are urbanising more rapidly than the metros, and tend to be amongst the most congested.

Adequate and just transportation systems are crucial from a development perspective given the importance of high-quality transportation in ensuring economic growth. What can cities do to achieve this?

Firstly, investment in public transportation in smaller cities of India needs to increase to prevent them from following the unsustainable pathways that the congested and polluted larger cities have experienced. Bus transport is an appropriate strategy for smaller towns because metros raffordable solutions that can justify the huge investments. Bus reduces congestion on the streets, increases affordability and access for the poor, and delivers sustainability outcomes. In this context, the recent announcement that state transport units in India will purchase 5,000 electric buses for cities like Surat, Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad is welcome.

Secondly, cities need to prioritise non-motorised transportation modes like walking and cycling. Pedestrian sidewalks are a rarity in most streets in urban India - these have to become a must for cities to be walking-friendly and to reduce pedestrian accident fatalities.

Third, electrification of transportation systems needs to prioritise public transport. While subsidies for electric private vehicles are valuable, one needs to appreciate that even electric private vehicles will continue to require the same road space and create the same congestion and road accident conditions as any other private vehicle.

The only solution that is sustainable in the long run is shifting commuters from private transport to public transport. For this, high-quality public transportation needs to be made available, in combination with policies that restrict the unconstrained expansion of the private vehicle fleet. Rapid expansion and electrification of bus fleets for smaller cities and priority to non-motorised transport, combined with metro rail transport where appropriate, can help Indian cities deliver on both sustainability and equity in transportation.

(The writer is a faculty of Public Policy at IIM, Bengaluru)