It might come as no surprise that four Indian cities are in a list of “top ten worst” urban sprawls in terms of traffic snarls. Highly chaotic Bengaluru occupies the top slot, while largely struggling Mumbai, as also Pune and capital New Delhi are in the list. Notably, despite all the fast-paced urban growth, Chinese cities do not figure in the list, while Asian nations like the Philippines and Indonesia are there, as also Russia, which has Moscow in a mess.
One of the first endeavours of Jawaharlal Nehru after Indian won Independence and he started running the first government was to introduce five-year Plans. It helped push agriculture and various other key sectors of national life and economy. What the successive governments missed out was, most prominently, urban planning and housing sectors. Cities grew on their own without state intervention. The result, private agencies played havoc, there are choked drains, slums where the poor live with too little of facilities, and narrow roads. The flooding of vehicles on the roads in the past quarter of a century was an unexpected turn. Such is the difficulty on the traffic and parking fronts today that, in many cities, those having own cars keep it back home and take the services of new taxi car companies like Uber, Ola etc, to avoid mental strain.
The traffic snarls in Mumbai have been a tortuous experience on roads for decades. The fast growth of Bengaluru as an IT city turned it into another traffic nightmare. Notably, the governments did too little to overcome the problems. Even the Metro Rail system there is yet to reach out to most parts of the city; so too with Mumbai. Delhi has introduced its Metro system some 20 years after Kolkata did. This helped somewhat. Yet, the massive flooding of the capital with vehicles, and fast-paced growth of the capital’s neighbourhood meant much more needed to be done.
Notably, despite the vast spread of the city and its teeming populace, Kolkata presents a better picture, as modes of transport are many there, unlike in other cities. Also, the people there have less of a fancy to owning vehicles, as public transport is doing well. In fact, there are lessons for other cities to learn from Kolkata. More of adherence to the Metro Rail system in urban areas is the way forward, which can help reduce the number of vehicles on the roads. This is environment-friendly, cost-effective and well-presented. Governments should be more serious about urban planning as a whole; and not shirk such responsibilities.