Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Proper transport planning required' that was published in Newsband

Proper transport planning required

There is something seriously wrong with current transport planning in India. Despite investing heavily in infrastructure projects, the cities have not resolved traffic issues efficiently. A perfect planning is required to be done for sustainable urban mobility.

An expert on traffic matters has cautioned that in another two decades the average journey speed of vehicles on the major city roads would come down drastically from 26 to 17 km an hour to 8 to 6 km an hour. This would lead to inefficient use of fuel, inordinate wastage of time and more pollution.

Developing a fast lane road network alone cannot change the inefficient travel pattern. What are required are compact neighbourhoods built around mass transport links.

The public transport system is in a pathetic condition in our country. Instead of resorting to the public transport available many a families today have multiple vehicles of their own. Many of us do not even spare a moment to think of the pollution levels of the so called metro-polis we are living in.

The vehicle population on the roads of Indian cities is increasing at an alarming speed. Proper planning for future is need of the hour. Comprehensive planning alone can solve the problem. Neither the Centre nor the states are giving prime attention to the development of major cities in a organised way.

There are places in India where the prime transport are buses and that go jam packed everyday. People here are forced to use personal two and three wheeler vehicles on the narrow roads to reach their destinations with great difficulty. At least the governments should formulate the basic structure like parallel and link roads to fulfill the needs of the people for smooth travel in the cities.

The major flaw with our transportation planning is measuring the progress in terms of speed rather than accessibility. The working group on urban transport for the Twelfth Five-Year Plan also has committed the same mistake and the result is unprecedented funding for intra-city road and metro networks. It must be realized that any effort to expand road network would only increase private vehicle ownership which further increases emissions and causes more congestion, leading  to the cities becoming dangerous places to live in.

Planners should realize that travel is a means to overcome deficiencies and land use planning must aim at minimizing these deficiencies by way of compact neighborhoods with basic amenities available at walkable distances. Walk and bicycle-friendly cities and nations are must to face the current rise in oil prices.

Transport infrastructure development has not received the same attention that communications has received. The interests of the masses is totally ignored. Take for instance, Mumbai. Its working people travel more than two hours each way commuting from the far distant northern suburbs far beyond say from Ambarnath, Virar etc. The loss that this hardship causes to productivity is not researched by any economist. Added to this is the strange combination of policies giving preferences to road bridges and water ways. These will cover only car users and water transport on the sea board is not available in monsoon months and lastly it is a poor alternative to the railways.

Thus what is wanted is a total overhaul of the policy itself.