The less said the better about the nation’s transportation policy. With a steady and phenomenal increase in the vehicle population in the past 30 years, city streets are bursting at the seams. The more governments engage in fire-fighting operations, the worse the scenario becomes. The present move by the Delhi government to introduce regulations in car purchases etc, like insisting that a third car a family buys must be an electric vehicle, would marginally help solve the larger problem of pollution. But such soft steps alone will not help in tackling similar issues in other cities too. With India witnessing a vehicle sales revolution in recent years, the sales last year was around 2.5 crore; an 11.4 per cent surge compared to the previous year. This made India the world’s third largest vehicle market. Passenger vehicle sales totalled 10 lakh units in one quarter last year. Most of these are obviously urban-centric; a reason why city streets bear the brunt. The railway sector’s failure to handle freights efficiently led to an explosion of trucks on the roads. All these pose the problems of road congestion, traffic snarls and pollution.
Fact of the matter is, regulatory mechanisms were absent or were not at work at all. It is for governments to plan the transportation system long-term; and for the people to derive the advantages. A city state like Singapore effectively tackles these problems through a good mass transport system; so does the developed world as a whole. The chaos that marks Indian roads could be evident in relatively smaller levels in the rest of the developing countries as well, many of which are governed by democratic governments that change periodically. Long-term visualization, planning and execution are there, of course; but these lack seriousness at the apex itself. A nation with a population bulge of 1.4 billion should have adopted policies that are mindful of the ground-realities.
The failure on the part of successive governments to plan and implement effective rapid mass transportation systems is the principal reason for the problems of vehicular pollution and road congestion. Building national highways in modern ways was a good initiative, which changed the face of India. Yet, the wrong, unbridled encouragement to the passenger vehicles segment caused all the problems. Cities that grew on their own without proper planning have narrow roads, buffeted by shops and business establishments on both sides. Road widening is a difficult task and it costs massive sums. Hence, the marginal improvements, which however fail to solve the congestion problem. The unpardonable delay in the introduction of Metro Rail systems across cities – after its high-profile start in Calcutta in 1984 – showed how the nation’s leadership lacked the determination to change things for the better. Till now, only around 15 cities have this system, covering a total distance of no more than 500km.
