Written by Anumita Roychowdhury
As a severe smog episode persists in Delhi and the National Capital Region, emergency action has been taken to not only restrict construction activities, waste burning, diesel generator sets, and industrial sources but also to restrain vehicle usage.
This time too, in addition to restricting trucks, all Bharat Stage III (BSIII) vehicles and BSIV diesel vehicles have been taken off the road. Further restraints are proposed on the use of personal cars with a temporary odd-and-even scheme to regulate daily movement based on licence plate numbers. Such emergency measures are restrictive, but are needed to slow down the peaking of pollution and prevent a further dip in air quality.
Yet, year after year, efforts to restrain vehicles provoke the sharpest public criticism. This is because of the crippling mobility crisis in the city. When faced with such measures, the gut reaction is to underplay the role of vehicles in the city’s air pollution.
Official emissions inventories of 2018 show that vehicles emit about 40 per cent of the particulate load in the city. The Decision Support System of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, which continuously estimates the relative contribution of sources to particulate concentration every hour, finds that vehicles can contribute more than half of the pollution among local sources; they can also be the second- or third-highest contributor if local and external sources of pollution are combined.
Despite this evidence and knowledge, mitigation of vehicular emissions remains difficult.
In the long-drawn pollution battle in the city, vehicles have always been the key target of action. Following a series of Supreme Court directives, Delhi has successfully reduced toxic diesel emissions over time by restricting truck entry and imposing a pollution charge on trucks, big diesel cars and SUVs and on diesel fuel, while leapfrogging to BSVI emission standards in 2020. The overall share of diesel car registration has dropped from more than 35 per cent in 2014-15 to 7.5 per cent in 2022-23.
To add to this, the entire public transport and local commercial transport systems have been moved to compressed natural gas. Fleet electrification is also underway. This transition has successfully reduced transport diesel consumption by 46 per cent in the city between 2014 and 2022.
Yet, emission improvement per unit of vehicle due to these advancements has been undercut by the cumulative emissions from explosive vehicle numbers and congestion.
Even after phasing out older vehicles, the number of on-road vehicles is more than 80 lakh. Two-wheelers are 60 per cent of the fleet, but growth in car numbers remained bullish even during the pandemic, with a strong recovery at 47 per cent during 2022-23. With a staggering 280 lakh daily trips expected to be generated in the city, Delhi could collapse if a sizable shift to cars occurs without adequate public transportation.
Personal automobile dependence has to be reduced; public transport needs to be augmented. The Delhi Master Plan target of 80 per cent of motorised trips by public transport by 2020 has not been met yet. The deadline has been shifted to 2041.
Ironically, despite the increase in demand and growth in bus numbers to 7,041, against the Supreme Court-mandated 10,000 buses, the number of passengers carried per bus daily has dropped by an average of 48 per cent since 2017-18, as per the Delhi Economic Survey, 2022-23.
While passenger numbers are down, the distance completed by buses each day has increased, leading to more empty kilometres. The Metro is gaining its pre-pandemic ridership now.
Even though improvements are underway with the expansion of the electric bus fleet, revamping of bus infrastructure, route rationalisation, the One Delhi App, universal journey planner, real-time arrival information bus stops etc, these are not adding up for scalability.
While more efforts are needed to make integrated public transport convenient, accessible and affordable for all, they won’t be adequate without strategies to simultaneously restrain personal vehicle usage.
Largely free and uncontrolled parking and the absence of effective taxes on car usage and congestion pricing make personal vehicles comparatively cheaper to operate. This acts as a hidden subsidy for cars, while the journey costs of using public transport interchanges can be more expensive.
Currently, the only available legal restraint measure for car usage is the notified parking rules requiring ward-wise parking management area plans and variable pricing. But these have not been implemented, having faced strong opposition despite the successful implementation of three pilots directed by the Supreme Court and subsequent directives for their city-wide implementation in 2019.
The political will to tame the car has to get stronger to ensure a substantial shift to public transport. It is possible. About 60 per cent of Delhi’s urban area will be within a 15-minute walking distance from metro stations and about 80 per cent of Delhi residents will be within 400 metres of some metro station once the entire network is in place. Scalable integrated public transport services, feeders, a dense street network for walking and cycling, and more housing closer to the transit nodes can make a difference.
But any scale of change will never be enough unless the demand for car usage is reduced with effective action.
The writer is executive director, Research and Advocacy, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi
Unless the demand for personal vehicles comes down, any action to clean the air will be inadequate
10
1
10.11.2023
Written by Anumita Roychowdhury
As a severe smog episode persists in Delhi and the National Capital Region, emergency action has been taken to not only restrict construction activities, waste burning, diesel generator sets, and industrial sources but also to restrain vehicle usage.
This time too, in addition to restricting trucks, all Bharat Stage III (BSIII) vehicles and BSIV diesel vehicles have been taken off the road. Further restraints are proposed on the use of personal cars with a temporary odd-and-even scheme to regulate daily movement based on licence plate numbers. Such emergency measures are restrictive, but are needed to slow down the peaking of pollution and prevent a further dip in air quality.
Yet, year after year, efforts to restrain vehicles provoke the sharpest public criticism. This is because of the crippling mobility crisis in the city. When faced with such measures, the gut reaction is to underplay the role of vehicles in the city’s air pollution.
Official emissions inventories of 2018 show that vehicles emit about 40 per cent of the particulate load in the city. The Decision Support System of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, which continuously estimates the relative contribution of sources to particulate concentration every hour, finds that vehicles can contribute more than half of the........
© Indian Express
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