Sustainable Transport and the Modernization of Urban Transport in Delhi - Essay Example

Sustainable transport and the modernization of urban transport in Delhi Contents Contents 2 Background 3 Problems 3 Solutions 5 Advantages 6 Conclusion 6 References 8 Background The role of transport has become an important area of city life. Modern lifestyle and economic development depends on transport sector. It is considered as the harbinger of economic development where investment in road, transportation will act as an enabler for other industries to start-up. Investment in efficient urban transport systems improves the life style of the living population. The importance of modern city is important for maintaining competitiveness in international and national context. Lack of transport facilities will lead to imperfect urban public traffic system. These kinds of problem weaken the advantage of public transportation and restrict the development of public transport. Problems The urban travel in Indian cities mainly happens by cycling, walking and public transport. Though in the last two decades there have been huge growth rates of cars and two wheelers by 10 % and 15 % respectively in India, the two wheeler ownership remains at 40 – 50 % and car ownership remains low at 3-13 %. This shows that in India the ownership rate of personalised vehicles are low. The same thing is repeated in Delhi where the contribution margin of urban public transport is low. At present in Delhi per 1000 people only 50 persons have cars and per 1000 people 74 individuals have motorcycles. Government of Delhi implemented a number of bus optimization policies but sadly bus did not become the subject of urban transport (Stock, and Lambert, 2001, p. 211). According to a study conducted by urban development ministry at the Centre, in Delhi the availability of public transport is very low i.e. per 1000 persons it is 0.504. The average waiting time for all 517 Delhi Transport Corporation buses is 70 minutes. The reason for such high waiting time was less frequent bus trips in underdeveloped and sparsely populated areas. According to the report only 2,202 buses out of 6,455 in Delhi are made according to urban bus specifications. The report indicates that on an average DTC rolls out 5,185 buses everyday out of total fleet of 6,088 buses. Besides 120 DMRC feeder buses and 247 private operator buses bring the total number of buses running in the city to 5,552. In Delhi there are total 657 routes which are registered with State Transport Authority. The total route length for all the routes including overlapping and suburban routes comes out to be around 16,200 km. But the suburban routes are very less in number and have very little contribution to the total route length. Hence the road network is very low (Chopra and Meindl, 2008, p. 49). The Public transport infrastructure in Delhi lacks unified planning. The road network in Delhi is based on notional hierarchy of roads which ranges from collector and residential roads to arterial roads designed for fast traffic. But due to lack of planning, the pedestrians are present on all the roads regardless of designated functions and hierarchy. This happens because government looks to get healthy vote share and thus build roads without proper planning. The existing road planning and design does not cater separately to bicycles, pedestrians or other slow moving traffic. Service roads which are present are not well maintained. No additional facilities are provided for buses except for providing bus shelters. There have no specific planning for bus priority lanes, lane for slow vehicles like rickshaws and bicycles, continuous pedestrian paths. This leads to safety issues. Hence the result is that all of them have to share the same carriageway. Around 40-60% of the vehicles in Delhi consist of two wheelers which takes less road space than four wheelers like buses and cars. But despite this the average speed has been decreasing over the years. During peak time the traffic on arterial roads crawls due to major intersections. In Delhi most of the arterial roads are six way lanes divided into roads but such extensive network of roads have not been developed to serve mixed traffic (Murphy and Wood, 2008, p. 131). Solutions It is important that more investment happens in public transport so as to increase the number of routes and buses. This will improve the economic condition of the city and improve the lifestyle of the population living there. Another solution is to optimize the design of bus lanes which will decrease the times of transfer to maximize the efficiency. By designing separate bus lanes the speed and safety issue will both be tackled. The travellers will not have to wait for long hours to get a bus. The Government should try to introduce advanced urban public transport management technology and methods like Vehicle automatic positioning technology. This will help in determining and transmitting the geographic location of a vehicle. This will help to figure out whether the vehicles are running on designated routes or are deviating from their normal routes. The government can establish intelligent public traffic system along with electronic toll collection system. This will help to reduce the congestion in the roads based on real time data. The electronic toll collection system will raise revenue for the government to invest in transportation sector. Heavy goods carrying vehicle should not be allowed to enter Delhi during rush hours. This will increase the speed of traffic and safety. The government should give financial compensation when the public transport company suffers policy loss. This will enable them to run their operation in case of heavy losses (Harrison and Hoek, 2011, p. 74). The government should set up bus lane for developing Bus Rapid Transit System so that they can become eligible for grant aid offered by the central government. They should develop six lane arterial roads with two lanes reserved for public transport buses and other reserved for pedestrians and cyclists. There should to two way lane for bus alone. Advantages As pointed before improve of urban traffic system will lead to economic development. Investment in efficient urban transport systems improves the life style of the living population along with urban traffic network. By developing segregated lanes for bicycles the curb side lane which is used by bicyclist will be available for motorized traffic. Bicycle lane will thus result in better space utilisation. The speed of buses and two wheelers will improve because the curb side lane becomes available to them without any interference from slow vehicles. This will lead to low congestion and low pollution. By having segregated lanes for each type of vehicles there will be sharp decrease in number of accidents and fatalities. Again such steps will improve the confidence of people on the Government (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons, 2007, p. 172). Conclusion Modernization of public transport will bring the long term development to the city. It will promote the development of economy and improve the international visualization of the city. With improved road transport system the existing land-use distribution and socio-economic patterns will improve and will help in development of complete road network. It must be kept in mind that without taking slow vehicles into consideration it is not possible to design efficient bus system. Hence all types of transportation need to be considered for improving the transport system in Delhi. References Chopra, S. and Meindl, P. 2008. Supply Chain Management: Strategy, Planning & Operations, Third edition, New York: Pearson Education. Fitzsimmons, J.A. and Fitzsimmons, M.J. 2007. Services Management: Operations, Strategy, Information Technology, Sixth edition. London: MaGraw-Hill High Education. Harrison, A. and Hoek, R.V. 2011. Logistics Management & Strategy, Fourth edition. London: Financial Time/Prentice Hall. Murphy, P.R. and Wood, D. 2008. Contemporary Logistics, Ninth edition, New York: Pearson Education. Stock, J.R. and Lambert, D. 2001. Strategic Logistics Management, Fourth edition. London: MaGraw-Hill High Education. Read More