by Sunita Sanghi & Jeetendra Singh
Monday, 28th March 2016
According to Census 2011, at least 377 million Indians, comprising about 31 per cent of the country’s population, live in urban areas. Even though in percentage terms the urbanization level may appear to be relatively low, the sheer volume of the urban population is enormous. Today, India’s urban population is more than the entire population of a country like United States of America or Brazil. The urbanization level in India is set to further increase and the urban population is expected to reach about 600 million by 2030.
In urban areas, efficient and affordable mobility is important so as to ensure easy access for citizens to labour markets and places of education and leisure. Lack of proper mobility can make cities non-inclusive as the poor and vulnerable sections would not be able to access the labour markets. Efficiently managing the mobility of people in a sustainable manner would be a key challenge for Indian cities.
Unfortunately, today we are witnessing more and more congestion on the streets of our cities which is leading to problems like air and noise pollution, posing serious health hazards for citizens. In cities like Bengaluru, situation has reached such alarming levels that citizens are spending over 3 to 4 hours a day commuting between home and work. The situation in Delhi is similar. Delhi tried to address this problem temporarily to some extent recently by going for odd-even formula for a fortnight. In fact, the augmentation in infrastructure of roads and flyovers and more parking space in cities has led to increase in the ownership of cars and motorbikes which have occupied the increased space and mobility still suffers.
The State and city authorities are now realizing that for improving mobility, merely increasing the supply of road infrastructure is not sufficient and there is a need to tackle the demand side of urban transport as well. We need to find answers to such questions - why should people need to move on cars and motorbikes? Why can’t we design our cities and streets so that more and more people walk and cycle to work, education and leisure? Why can’t we provide quality and affordable public transport like bus systems or Bus Rapid Transit (BRTs) or Metro Rail Transit systems with seamless last mile connectivity so that people prefer public transport over private motor vehicles? All these measures call for planning, designing and implementing smart and sustainable urban transport solutions in our cities.
NITI Aayog’s consultations with States and Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and experts reveal that States and city authorities lackadequate capacities to implement such solutions. Particularly, small sized cities (1 to 10 lakh inhabitants) and medium sized cities (10 to 50 lakh inhabitants) face serious challenges in planning and implementing such smart and sustainable urban transport solutions because of lack of sufficient institutional as well as individual capacities. These cities need to plan sustainable urban transport systems which should facilitate more of walking, cycling and travel by public transport rather than personal motor vehicle and para-transit transport usage prevalent today. Some work has been done in this direction by different agencies and Central/State Governments but it is quite fragmented and there is a need to develop simple, clear and lucid framework documents and holistic guidelines for cities particularly the smaller and medium sized ones and to handhold them to plan, implement, maintain and operate smart and sustainable urban transport solutions.
In view of this, NITI Aayog has identified developing Strategic Mobility Planning and Project Design & Implementation Tool Kitsto facilitate small & medium sized cities to implement Smart and Sustainable Urban Transport Solutions, as one of its key focus areas in 2016-17. In this initiative NITI Aayog would partner with knowledge bodies/experts on the one hand and States/cities on the other hand. This engagement would help in developing Strategic Planning tool kits for (i) Strategic Mobility Planning and (ii) Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and implementation tool kits for (i) Complete Streets focusing on walking, cycling, parking etc. and (ii) Public Transport focusing on City Bus Services and BRT.
(Sunita Sanghi is Adviser, Skill Development, Employment and Managing Urbanisation Verticals in NITI Aayog.
Jeetendra Singh is Director, Managing Urbanisation & State Plans Vertical in NITI Aayog)
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