The Capital’s vehicular population has officially breached the 1.05-crore mark, with over 94% of it being constituted by private vehicles. This, even when there has been no proportional increase in road space in a city that houses over 2.7 crore residents.
1 crore private vehicles
According to the latest figures compiled by the Delhi Transport Department, the city’s population of privately-owned vehicles is just shy of 1 crore, an estimated 99,38,656 till May 25 if one combines the total number of privately-registered cars and two-wheelers across categories.
This, despite two arguably effective phases of the odd-even vehicle rationing scheme, which sought to affect a behavioural change in vehicle usage patterns and wean the average citizen onto public transport, being implemented in separate phases by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government last year.
Poor public transport
Expected to breach the 1.6-crore mark by the beginning of next week when fresh figures are compiled, these numbers are also an indication of the fact that Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal’s de-congestion programme, which is expected to be brought in soon in south Delhi, will be relatively more difficult to implement.
Experts have attributed the sky-rocketing vehicular population to the dismal state of the public transport system, of which the Delhi Transport Corporation’s (DTC) fleet of 4,000-odd buses is a significant but neglected part. Not just this, lack of last-mile connectivity and technical constraints related to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) network lead Delhiites to keep away from public modes of transport.
Metro can’t service all city
“The Delhi Metro cannot be expected to service the entire length and breadth of the National Capital Region (NCR). The DTC’s fleet of buses, meanwhile, is not equipped to handle the sheer footfall of commuters. More and more citizens are being forced to opt for private vehicles, especially two-wheelers, because complementary modes of last-mile connectivity have not been enhanced,” said Dr. S. Velmurugan, head of the Traffic Engineering and Safety Division, CSIR-CRRI.
Over 67 lakh two-wheelers
At a combined number of 67,65,814, motorcycles, scooters, motorcycles with side cars and mopeds account for over 64% of the vehicular population.
With around 400 DTC buses remaining off the roads due to operational issues, despite its already minimal fleet, and the Delhi Metro yet to reach several far-off populated locations in the NCR, two-wheelers, Dr. Velmurugan said, have emerged as the sole alternative.
Boost for DTC fleet soon
A senior government official said efforts were now under way to add both low-floor and semi low-floor buses to the DTC “in the coming days.” “We are aware that the DTC fleet has to expanded sooner than later. We expect to begin the process to induct new buses within three to four months,” the official said.
