A recent report by The World Bank on India’s urban mobility congestion in 154 large Indian cities highlights the fact that most Indian cities are slow not due to high traffic congestion, but due to low uncongested mobility. The report highlights that the condition of mobility in general is bad in almost all the cities, there being hardly any gap between the highest speed and slowest speed during the entire day. Kolkata is the slowest city, followed by Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai. Varanasi and Patna are, respectively, the fifth and sixth slowest city, followed by Delhi at the seventh place.
The report goes on to prove that, first, overall mobility is slow in all the cities at all times of the day, or else the speed should have been severely affected by traffic congestion during peak hours leading to speed differentials between peak and non peak, and second, the condition of mobility in smaller tier-ii and tier –iii cities is as bad as the metro cities. This report overturns the long-held belief that Indian cities get congested during morning and evening peak hours, and that excess traffic is to be blamed for this congestion, the rationale which forms the bedrock of the oft-suggested solution to road congestion - congestion pricing, latest being The World Bank itself which wanted congestion pricing as one of the initiatives under the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) in Mumbai. Moreover the report clearly shows that there is systemic fault in our traffic and city planning which inherently impairs the overall city mobility in India, and makes our cities slower at all times of the day, be there traffic or no traffic.
Eight of the twenty slowest cities belong to the state of Bihar and Jharkhand, and barring two, these cities are outside of the top 100 most populous cities in India. Take the case of Bhagalpur in Bihar - this city with a population of just four lakh (country’s 112th most populous city) is the eighth slowest city in India, just a shade faster than Delhi, but slower than Chennai or Pune. None of the eight cities have a well developed public transport system and virtually no infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists (NMTs) even though the NMTs dominate the modal share. This goes on to prove that the tier-ii and tier-iii cities are in a pathetic state as far as urban planning and transportation policy is concerned, and yet during most debates and policy interventions it is the metro cities which occupy the prime place, with the smaller cities and towns being relegated to the periphery.
To get out of this mega urban mess that our cities have become, our mobility discourse has to be nuanced enough to, firstly, accept that each class of city and towns, and not just the large ones, need adequate importance, and, secondly, it is the smaller cities which are the low hanging fruit where innovative mobility solutions could be implemented far easily than the metros owing to lower population and easier to surmount real estate hurdles. And most importantly, NMTs should occupy the prime, non-negotiable, position in every form of urban mobility discourse and intervention.
Trip lengths in non-metro cities are shorter, within 6 km distance, and more than 50% trips are done by the Non-Motorized Transport mode. However owing to the lack of a developed public transport system or NMT infrastructure, city mobility is paralyzed and slow during all times of the day due to overdependence on personal motorized vehicles (two wheelers and four wheelers) as well as the use of roads for non-transportation purposes. As there is already a high usage of NMTs, more so among low income households for whom NMTs are the only affordable mode of transport, and that there exists a large pool of potential users who will only use this mode once dedicated infrastructure is in place, it all comes down to the right kind of visible, policy-level nudge from city planners and political heads.
A very good beginning is being made through the Smart Cities Programme, and all the selected 100 cities have put NMT promotion as one of the goals in their respective Smart City Proposals (SCP) submitted to the Ministry of Urban Development. However just giving a target of a certain percentage of total city roads to be developed as NMT friendly roads, as is mentioned in the SCPs, is not enough. These proposals should have clearly spelt out the specifics (width, protected/non-protected, parking facilities, bike stands, route plan etc.), and should have given measurable commitments on developing an integrated cycling network which could take commuters from one place to another with comparable ease. Commitment for NMT promotion has also been made in the past, like in the case of JnNURM, however nothing substantial is visible in any of the cities, big or small.
Promotion of NMTs in metros, with longer average trip lengths, will require a different approach than that of smaller cities. Mumbai, with its highly developed public transportation and yet being one of the slowest and congested cities, presents a great opportunity to become a future model template for various potential NMT initiatives. Average daily trip length is 12 Kms. As per The World Bank report Mumbai is the fourth slowest and second most congested city in India, even though more than 50% commuters use public transport. As a substantial proportion of commuters use public transport, and yet the city is one of the slowest and most congested, it is quite valid to assume that there is great scope for NMTs to solve access to transit (where half of the city’s populace converge adding to the traffic woes around transit stations), which is currently being accessed by private motorized vehicles or unregulated para-transits.
As per MCGM’s Mumbai Development Plan: Preparatory Studies Report, 40% of commuters access suburban railways other than on foot. As the bike parking facilities around suburban railway stations, and the rest of the city, are hardly developed, it can be assumed that almost all – nearly 3.2 million commuters - access these stations using mechanized modes of transport. NMT initiatives, particularly the bike-train combination, can be a good strategy to solve traffic congestion induced during access to transit, at the same time leading to host of other co-benefits.
Kager and Hermes in their seminal paper on bike-transit integration have clearly highlighted the significance of better integration of cycling and transit, and term this integration as a separate, unique mode in itself; for the combination of the two modes entail benefits which are more than the benefits assigned to each of these modes individually. The Netherlands has been a pioneer in promoting the bike-train integration and half of the train commuters access the train stations using bicycles, and one of the most successful initiatives being the OV-Fiets bicycle rental scheme (a multi partnership project involving NS, Pro Rail and The Netherlands government) which ensures that a bike is available to train passengers at their destination.
The bike-transit integration initiatives should be mandatorily made part of all DPRs for metros rails, suburban rails, BRTs and other such transport projects, and it should be ensured that they don’t remain on the periphery as a compliance item only (provisioning total 18 bicycle sharing stands with 560 daily trips by Delhi Metro, when the daily commuters are more than 27.6 lakhs, does not do justice to the need for sustainable transportation). A healthy focus on bike-transit integration can go a long way in solving the transport woes of cities, particularly road access in and around the transit stations which remain perpetually chocked during most times of the day. Bicycle rentals and other such activities should no longer be seen as something which is outside the scope of the transit operators. Rather, as railways operators have done in The Netherlands through the OV-Fiets scheme, bicycles can also be used as a strategy to enhance the effectiveness of transits themselves.
For a city like Mumbai, bicycles linkages with transit can help in increasing the service areas of individual railway stations and hence can lead to fewer mandatory stops of trains; thus helping in increasing the number of train services. This was evident recently when the new time table released by the Western Railways for Mumbai suburban curtailed stoppages of some fast corridor trains at Jogeshwari station which falls on the slow corridor. There was enough public outcry for the authorities to revert the decision. Had there been a good bike-transit integration, commuters would have had access from slow service station like Jogeshwari to rapid service station like Andheri (which is on the fast corridor, and hardly 3 kms from Jogeshwari).
All urban mobility stakeholders in India have to wake up to the fact that it is the nuanced understanding and strategic policy level commitment to make the mobility multi-modal, efficient - and equitable focus on existing modal share -which will take the Indian cities out of the urban mobility mess that we are into presently. Also, this is the right time to make NMTs a part of the election manifestoes here. When NMTs can play an important part in the political manifesto of leaders in Denmark, Paris, Copenhagen and London, there is all the more reason for political parties in India to do so.
About the author
The author is a civil servant working with the Indian Railways, currently posted at Mumbai, Western Railway. Views expressed are personal.
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