India has no option but to give priority to walking, cycling and BRT. This is true for a million plus city as well as the metro and mega cities.

There has been sufficient and mixed response to this article that I felt I should respond to as part II of the article…

Firstly, two responses were kind of objection to the map of India I had used to show the thirteen Urban Agglomerates (UAs) with population greater than 2 million or 20 lakhs. The fact is that there was no clean map readily available that I could use and superimpose the location of these UAs.  However, the map did show the boundary of India correctly without any truncation. While this base map was searched out in a hurry, subsequent to these two reactions, a little more search got me an absolutely clean outline map of India, which is what you see now on line with these UAs.

Having set that aside, I will begin by responding to the comments which have been short and pointed. Thereafter, perhaps a comprehensive response would be appropriate for the rest of 17 comments.

No. It is a palliative like the so called ‘flyovers’. The real answer is decongestion by rapid urbanisation of the rural hinterland.

The rate at which the second and third tier cities are growing, and their numbers are not small, India’s million plus cities, which are presently 46, is likely to touch 56 by the 2021 census. The 13 current two million plus cities are likely to cross 18 by 2021. The rate of growth of metros and mega cities are far slower, though in volume, due to their base size, matches with the cumulative volumes of these smaller cities. Mobility problems will hit these smaller cities just as the smaller of the metros are afflicted with it unless the right kind of medicine is provided. In principle if priority is given to walking, cycling and the BRT, our non-metros and non-mega cities will become more livable than otherwise.

Haven't there been any studies done in the last five to seven years to address/explore this problem/feasible solutions?

The National Urban Transport Policy has evolved only after looking at various studies carried out over the years and in a nutshell, says that walking, cycling and BRT be given priority.

It should have been in Bombay 50 years ago. Funds for Bombay's Metro were diverted to Calcutta by the dictatorship during the Emergency to curry favour of the Communist regime there.

I think India’s economic boom has resulted in investments of all forms coming India’s way. At that point in time, Kolkata (Calcutta) was the most populous city in India and with limited funds available then, it was natural that it made political sense to put the Kolkata Metro before Mumbai Metro, which already had an efficient suburban railway system, although overstretched.

Though the answer to the above question is that metro, mono are not the answers, the bigger question is ‘are the decision makers listening?’

There seems to be international pressures by way of soft loans, just as banks give soft loans to potential motorcar buyers. With this kind of loan and tax-free environment for the Delhi Metro, impressive ingress has been made in the minds of certain sections of Delhites and more so the domestic tourists, through whom the cities having poor public transport get their aspirations raised. Thereafter, the ‘big ticket’ projects attract all the groups with business interests and sadly, after LPG (Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation), attitudes of the government has shifted towards business ‘development’ rather than looking at optimum balance between welfare of people and financial sustenance.

Everyone seems to know what the answer is not. No one seems to have a clearly feasible solution. If there isn’t a clear answer to the situation available, what would you want the decision makers to listen to? To the problem? They have probably heard the problem many times over. The first step here is to persuade the decision makers to commission a study to find out a LONG-TERM feasible solution and then there would be a basis to discuss implementation of the solution!

The problem is that our experts have learnt traffic and transportation engineering from most affluent and motorized country, not that everything that country has worked out is wrong. However, the third world countries of Latin America have experienced problems accentuating due to following this idol country and have on their own worked out solutions matching their economic state and culture. Their urban area densities compare well with those of our cities, but economic states better than ours. They have adopted mobility as objective and not cars, and have realized that by investing in BRTS, they get more to spend on other socially relevant matters such as housing, education, public places for economically weaker sections. They have also found that these measures have helped even the affluent. When our decision makers see opportunities for rapid personal growth, or see purely the high gross domestic product (GDP) synonymous with growth, the decisions are bound to be skewed.

Looks like we are always fighting loosing battle.... Peddar Road for example is just not fit for a flyover of any kind... .because anything that we create above will take almost same space below. It may appear to have solved the problem for few people for some time and create problems for large number of people for a longer period. Mumbai needs metro below and bus lanes on the grade!!!!!!!!!

It is a pity that we have to stretch situation to the limit and then take decision after further limiting options available, spending capital wastefully supposedly for the benefit of few but not even benefiting them in reality. With population density of Mumbai being what it is, Metro surely is not going to improve matters considering the costs and implementation time involved. Now they are thinking of having an underground metro to run from Colaba to Seepz via Chhattrapati Shivaji International Airport. If the recently commissioned (little less than a year) Delhi Airport Metro Express is anything to go by, it would take all sorts of innovative measures only to increase the ridership on this kind of big ticket projects. The six-coach metro express was running with barely 15 people on board when I travelled by it about a month ago.

Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) carried out Comprehensive Traffic and Transport Study from 2005 and published the CTTS report in 2008 or simply the CTS-2008. They also prepared a business plan for Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) based on this and other studies. In fact a World Bank initiated short study in 2005 also indicated similar figures and it was felt that the sample size may have been too small or method erroneous. The CTS-2008 corroborated the WB study. Why it is so? Transportation and housing go hand in hand along with affordability of housing as well as transport. Since this has not been so, mushrooming of slums was natural. Growth of slums in Bengaluru is phenomenal—from 8% in the 2001 census to about 30% in 2011. This could be attributed to rapid growth of Bengaluru with young professional couples with high incomes needing and availing domestic services and all other services needing employing at income levels not commensurate with costs of housing closer to place of work and transport not coping up with the demand.

On the suggestion that Rs3,25,000 crore could be used to build entirely new townships, we need not and should not do that as we already have 35 UAs with population more than 10 lakh and many more getting into that category in near future. I will repeat the opening sentence of the original article—“Rapid urbanization in India means people with low levels of civic amenities they were accustomed to in rural settings have to cope up with overloaded higher level civic amenities in urban settings. Although there are several kinds of civic amenities and services that are there which in fact provide better quality of life in rural settings from fulfilment of basic necessities, the aspirations of human intellect and avenues to reach them is available in urban setting. Urban setting also ensures certainty of livelihood for which people move over to urban areas from rural settings”. Lavasa and Magarpatta are aberrations, small in size and essentially for the affluent. One does not hear of Ambey Valley nowadays, do we? Cities grow organically and urban planning must only facilitate equitable development. Bengaluru was a large town of keres i.e. tanks or large ponds spread all over. It replenished ground water all round the year. With the industrialization policy adopted in 1960s and reclamation of most tanks, water had to be pumped up about 700 meters from Cauvery to meet the requirement. Water supply becomes major crisis due to power shortages. To overcome this, concrete tanks have had to be constructed. Not all engineering wise feasible decisions are wise from sustainability point of view.

There is a widespread feeling that BRT is feasible only on roads that are wide, such as in Delhi. A footpath devoid of any obstruction needs to be 1.5 m wide. Add to this 1 m for intermittent obstruction from utility boxes and trees and street furniture. Provide 2 m for Non Motorised Vehicles (NMVs), which could locally ‘encroach’ into the ‘obstruction’ space of footpaths marginally to permit passing two NMVs. This takes away 4.5 m from half Right of Way (ROW), i.e. 9m from full ROW. Now consider four lanes for motorized vehicles (MVs), with substandard width of 3 m each. Narrow lanes prevent squeezing in to overtake and thus avoiding bottlenecking. It also keeps speeds in check and keeps driver’s attention on the road, thus reducing accidents and more so with fatality. This totals 21 m. Now if we were to provide up and down lanes of 3.5 m width for bus lanes, we take up 28 m of ROW. Now the question of bus stops comes up. A 4 m wide bus stop common for both direction buses could be provided by taking the 1m of the ‘footpath space meant for intermittent obstructions and 0.5 m each from the general MV lanes adjoining the bus lanes and reducing bus lane width to 3 m at bus stops would mean ROW remains 28 m. There should be no compromise on the footpath and NMV lanes even if ROW is small. Buses do not have to ply on every road or they also do not have to ply in both directions if there is some parallel road nearby where one could have an up route and the other could have down route. It is not necessary that there should be four lanes for MVs; two lanes for MVs with emergency time encroaching possibility into BRT lane could be acceptable. Some places, only BRT lanes and footpaths/NMV lanes may suffice. Make the bus system so efficient and comfortable that people find owning a car a redundant expenditure. I would say that, keeping the footpath and NMV Lanes concept in view all the time, a road with ROW of 9 m plus 7 m for buses plus 2 m for bus stop i.e. 18 m (60 ft) road is sufficient to form a network of BRTS. Even a 9 m ROW road could if necessary be used as a BRT singular directional route. The system has to be meticulously designed and yes, there is no doubt that routes for MV travel will also have to be worked out, but priority has to be for walking, cycling and BRT. Besides the mobility aspect, BRTS brings in quick movement of emergency services such as ambulances and fire tenders.

All the infrastructure projects are being taken up with the view of easing the MVs’ congestion, not recognizing that by doing that it encourages more MVs to come on the road, more people move out of public transport use due to its inadequacy leading to continuance of road congestion despite additional infrastructure added to cater to the new demand. Infrastructure built with the intent to increase the mobility would actually ease everyone’s mobility as well as congestion problems. Therefore central to the solution has to be the pedestrian, user of NMVs and also user of public transport. When a city does not have enough space on roads and enough money to fund projects that are equitable to improve quality of life for all, it has little option to deviate from giving priority to walking, cycling and BRT infrastructure.

I assume these would provide explanations to the viewpoints expressed by most. I do find some needing a separate answer as they have written plenty about Delhi Metro. Delhi Metro requires a separate article. I shall leave that for some future date. However those provoked to respond to this as well as on Delhi Metro—in support and against, may please do so. Issues need to be discussed. This article was essentially to place problems before us as a nation with growing number of cities with populations more than a million. As a parting argument, a personal motor car emits four times equivalent CO2 per passenger kilometre as against what a bus does and the Metro does twice that of a bus. Less personal vehicles on road would mean less of CO2 footprint and air and noise pollution. As the article stated, one can get a network of four times the network of a metro by providing BRTS at one-fifth the cost  of that metro i.e. one can get one kilometre of BRTS implemented at one-twentieth the cost of one kilometre of metro rail. And implementation time, as little as one-fifth that the metro will take.

(Sudhir Badami is a civil engineer and transportation analyst. He is on Government of Maharashtra’s Steering Committee on BRTS for Mumbai and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority’s Technical Advisory Committee on BRTS for Mumbai. He is also member of Research & MIS Committee of Unified Mumbai Metropolitan Transport Authority. He was member of Bombay High Court appointed erstwhile Road Monitoring Committee (2006-07). While he has been an active campaigner against Noise for more than a decade, he is a strong believer in functioning democracy. He can be contacted on email at [email protected])