One in two Delhiites has motor vehicle

Metro ridership to touch 40 lakh upon phase III completion, says survey report

NEW DELHI, 04/11/2017: Traffic jam at Ring Road near Dhaula Kuan in New Delhi on Saturday. Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

Every second citizen in the Capital owns a vehicle what with 556 motor vehicles per 1,000 residents, revealed the Economic Survey of Delhi 2017-18, which was tabled in the Delhi Assembly on Monday.

The total number of motor vehicles on the road in Delhi was recorded at 1.03 crore as on March 31, 2017, showing a growth of 6.99% over 2016-17. Two-wheelers comprised 64% of total registered vehicles, while cars and jeeps accounted for 30%.

‘Actual number unclear’

“Total vehicles in Delhi are 103.83 lakh,” the report stated. It, however, pointed out that there was a “contradiction” regarding the actual number of vehicles plying on Delhi’s roads as a large number of vehicles registered in the Capital were also plying in the national capital region and vice versa.

“The Transport Department is making efforts to estimate the actual number of vehicles in Delhi by taking into account vehicles that have outlived their life due to any account, transferred to and from other States,” it said.

During the last decade, the percentage of households using scooters or motorcycles has increased from 28% in 2001 to 38.9% in 2011. During the same period the percentage of households using cars, jeeps and vans increased from 13% to 20.7%. Contrary to this, the percentage of households using bicycles declined from 37.6% in 2001 to 30.6% in 2011.

The report stated that the DTC has 4,027 buses in its fleet and carries on average 32 lakh passengers a day. Meanwhile, the Delhi Metro registered a ridership of 28 lakh per day during 2016-17 which was, the report stated, expected to increase to 40 lakh with the completion of phase III.

The report also noted that private stage carriage buses, run by individual private operators, which had been replaced with a new scheme for operation of cluster buses being operated by corporate entities to provide better services and safety of journey to the commuters of Delhi were also incurring working losses.

“According to the scheme the Government has to meet the viability gap between the cost of operation and revenue earned from such bus scheme. Thus, presently, the Delhi Government has to bear the working losses of both, DTC and Cluster bus scheme,” it noted.