The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on Friday said that Delhi's fight against pollution and congestion will only get more difficult if it failed to contain motorisation within the city as well as the daily influx of vehicles from neighbouring towns.
With Environment Day coming up on June 5, a new analysis by the CSE suggests that the Capital's pollution troubles are far from over — despite the stringent action against trucks and the odd-even scheme.
A real-time cross-border traffic survey done by CSE has exposed the fact that the number of personal and passenger vehicles that enter Delhi daily — cars, SUVs, two-wheelers, taxis, buses (excluding trucks and light commercial vehicles) — are close to the total number of vehicles that get registered in Delhi in a year.
‘Explosive motorisation’
Anumita Roychowdhury, CSE’s executive director-research and head of its sustainable urbanisation programme, said: “Delhi’s battle against pollution, congestion and energy guzzling can get increasingly more difficult if its own explosive motorisation gets further aggravated by the huge daily influx of vehicles from outside. An equal numbers of vehicles are going out of Delhi daily contributing to pollution in the NCR towns as well. This new analysis reconfirms that ineffective public policy on public transport connectivity is increasing dependence on personal vehicles, leading to enormous pollution and ill-health in Delhi-NCR.”
“While so much effort is being made to bypass polluting trucks, both State and Central governments are turning the city roads into highways and elevated high-speed corridors for personal vehicles from the region. This is undercutting Delhi’s effort to control emissions and exposures in all sectors. These incoming vehicles contribute close to a quarter of the total particulate load from personal and passenger vehicles in the city,” Ms. Roychowdhury said.
The CSE said that real-time traffic count of all categories of vehicles entering and exiting Delhi was done round-the-clock at nine key entry points including Kundli border on NH-1, Tikri border on NH-10, Rajokri on NH-8, Badarpur border on NH-2, Kalindi Kunj, two points at Ghazipur border on NH-24; and two points at Shahdara border on NH-91.
The survey at nine entry points shows that around 3.07 lakh cars and 1.27 lakh two-wheelers enter Delhi every day. If this is taken as 70 per cent of the total traffic from all 124 entry points, then the total number of cars, SUVs and two-wheelers from all entry points can be as much as 5.65 lakh. The Economic Survey of Delhi for 2014-15 shows 5.69 lakh total vehicles were registered that year in the city.
Toxic air
A vehicle-wise break-up shows that 55 per cent of all vehicles are cars, 11 per cent are SUVs and 27 per cent are two-wheelers.
Cars and SUVs coming to Delhi are also the biggest fuel guzzlers and the highest emitters of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, the CSE said.
“Incoming NCR traffic is undercutting the air quality and health benefits from local measures to reduce toxic air pollution, especially diesel pollution. Delhi has moved all its buses, autos and taxis to CNG and is trying to control dieselisation of cars. It has also reduced influx of trucks from outside. But this is getting negated by huge influx of personal and passenger vehicles especially those on diesel,” the Centre for Science and Environment said.
Cars and SUVs coming to Delhi are the biggest fuel guzzlers and the highest emitters of heat-trapping CO2
