What Lessons Does 'Odd-Even' Have For Urban Transport Planning?

While there are still doubts over the ‘Odd-Even’ policy’s effect on reducing pollution, initiatives like these provoke public debate about urban transport and allow the government to create real alternatives to the challenges of mobility and congestion.

I am a resident of Mumbai, Maharashtra. The urban transport initiatives of the state government for Mumbai have revolved around a Rs 10,000 crore high-speed coastal road, a Rs 30,000 crore metro rail project (that will probably open in 2020, if not later), the struggle of BEST to find Rs 400 crore of subsidy and the constant raising of fares.

In Mumbai, some 10 percent of the people own cars, 3-5 percent use them on a daily basis, and 45 percent of people walk to work. Another 40 percent take public transport. And the Rs 20,000 crore we spent building roads, flyovers and expressways since 2000 has done nothing to address accessibility or congestion. This news of building more roads was great a disappointment to all of us in the urban transport fraternity.

The New Delhi government, however, has not disappointed. The talk has been about stopping flyover construction, about making roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists, about increasing the number of buses, and about implementing high-quality bus rapid transit.  And now the car restriction (odd/even) programme announcement. Restricted use of cars (or personal vehicles) is the only way to build safe, accessible, inclusive cities. The Delhi government understands this and it’s great to see it take bold steps in this direction.

The odd/even program announcement that bans the circulation of 50% of all private vehicles each day based on the last digit of the vehicle’s license plate number will show positive results in the short term. 20-30% reduction in vehicles significantly reduces fuel consumption and congestion. Reduced congestion significantly reduces black carbon and prolonged exposure to high concentrations pollutants on major roads. Ambient air quality improvements maybe limited as Delhi is discovering in the last few days. However, a program like this truly creates a public debate about urban transport and allows the government to create real alternatives to the challenges of mobility and congestion.

For over a century now, the prevailing paradigm in urban transport has been dominated by cars. However, the increasing dependency on cars over the years has produced tremendous negative externalities, including air pollution, chronic congestion, traffic accidents, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and social exclusion. These challenges have pushed human society to a tipping point, compelling a need for a paradigm shift!

Over the last two decades, several on-the-ground efforts in global cities show cars as a part of the urban mobility system, but not the main feature. There have been conscious efforts to influence an urban mobility system that is economically efficient, socially inclusive, and environmentally friendly. Many of these emerging principles in sustainable mobility show the potential to be adopted by a larger number of cities in the near future. These include:

1. Car restrictions
2. Designing urban roads for universal access
3. Scaling mass transit by combining buses, technology, and dedicated infrastructure
4. Multi-modal integration
5. Shared Mobility

In the long term Indian cities, including Delhi, need to systematically implement programmes and projects that advance these five trends. The AAP government can do a great service to its citizens by first adopting a mobility plan for the city along these lines and starting to implement some of these projects. Implementation will be a big challenge.

Most of these projects will be first-time implementations in India and will require bold, but risky, decisions. It will require coordinated action across multiple institutions, many of which are under the jurisdictions of opposition parties. In Delhi, institutions like the Delhi Development Authority and Delhi Metro Rail Corporation are a part of the Central Government, under the Ministry of Urban Development. The East, South and North Delhi Municipal Corporations are led by mayors from the BJP.

The following paragraphs review each trend in detail, and recommend a solution for Delhi and identify institutions the AAP government will have to negotiate with to ensure implementation.

Car Restrictions

A wide range of measures to restrict car use, including car-fee zones, car permit auctions, congestion pricing, parking pricing and restrictions, and restrictions based on licence plates have been used across the world with different degrees of success.

Car-free zones, congestion pricing, and parking pricing and restrictions work better in the longer term. The cost of implementing congestion pricing programmes is very high. In our context, parking policy is the best car restriction strategy to use. Delhi needs to eliminate all free on-street parking. All parking should preferably be paid, public and off-street. And parking pricing should be commensurate to the cost of the land used to park. Technology can be used to implement, operate and monitor a strict parking policy. Parking policies in Delhi will have to be implemented in coordination with Municipal Corporations. The AAP government will need to work with BJP corporators to drive this implementation.

Scaling Mass Transit by Combining Buses with Technology & Dedicated Infrastructure

Car restrictions need to be complemented with a quick scaling of mass transit. More than 100 cities around the world have demonstrated a quick scale-up of mass transit by combining technology and dedicated infrastructure with buses. Cities like London and New York use technology for automatic fare collection, vehicle tracking and combine it with dedicated infrastructure like transit malls. Cities in Latin America like Rio De Janerio, Bogota and Mexico City have implemented 100-plus km networks of high capacity bus rapid transit in less than five years.

Indian cities like Delhi and Mumbai need to do this urgently, in the next five years. In India, cities have been very reluctant to scale mass transit through buses and the urban bus industry (bus manufacturers, technology providers and infrastructure companies) has not evolved. If three or four cities show a strong inclination, the bus industry will mature quickly and further enable quicker, higher quality implementation.

Delhi needs to quickly increase its bus fleet by another 10,000. The big challenge to increasing the bus fleet is the lack of depot space available to park buses at night. The AAP government has to negotiate with the Delhi Development Authority under the Urban Development Ministry to acquire this land.

Bus Rapid Transit should be high on the agenda. A BRT network needs to be identified, implementation on one or two corridors needs to start immediately. The AAP government can work with it’s Public Works department (PWD) to identify corridors where they have the full jurisdictional authority to implement. A successful implementation in Delhi will make BRT a household conversation across India just like the odd/even announcement.

Designing for Universal Access

The current approach to design and build roads in a city is an approach for inter-city highways. These design ideas, guidelines, and standards are unsafe for city streets. Delhi’s streets are unsafe by design. Street design has changed as a science, from highway-centric designing to building for people. Design manuals launched by cities like New York have shifted their focus to the equitable distribution of road space. In Delhi, the UTTIPEC design guidelines also convey very good practices in street design; however, we are yet to see how this translates into implementation.

Delhi must design its’ roads that ensure the desired speed – the design speed. This can be achieved through urban design elements such as barriers, chicanes, lesser kerb radii, and reduced lane widths that slow down vehicle speed, and protected footpaths and bicycle lanes that safeguard vulnerable users. Urban design can also reduce the troublesome pedestrian crossings that force people to dart across and dodge vehicles.

Delhi has 10,000 km of road network. Many of these roads in Delhi are with the Public Works Department (PWD). The AAP government under the leadership of the PWD Minister should design and start a programme that begins to transform these roads for cars to become streets for people.

Multi-modal Integration

Full multi-modal integration has three elements – physical integration, fare integration and schedule integration. Advances in technology have made multimodal integration easier than even before. Several cities across the world have made this happen.

To achieve physical integration, Delhi needs a programme to build small, well-designed spaces (terminals) to integrate metro rail with buses and rickshaws. It also needs to make its bus terminals people-friendly.

For schedule integration, data about all public vehicles (location, schedules) need to be made public. Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) is part of the Transport Department that  is under the AAP government’s jurisdiction. They can start an open data initiative to harness the tremendous creative potential on citizens. Fare integration across modes is also easier now. The Ministry of Urban Development recently released the new electronic common mobility guidelines. DTC can work with a bank to implement cashless fare collection on all it’s DTC buses and start negotiating integration with Delhi metro. They can also start to provide feeder buses to metro stations.

Shared Mobility

Car sharing, bicycle sharing, car-pooling, ride sharing, auto-rickshaws, e-rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, and taxi aggregators are all shared mobility options. Delhi has all of them. Shared mobility options help increase the quality and quantity of the public transport network. With the advent of smartphones, shared mobility has evolved very rapidly in the last five years and will continue to do so. Globally cities need to do three things to ensure the advance of shared mobility

1. Establish regulations or performance standards that create a level playing field and allows governing these enterprises in fair and consistent ways.
2. Ensure shared mobility options are complementary and not competing with the city’s urban transport policies and goals
3. Shared mobility and technology are advancing very fast. City government needs to be able to create platforms and frameworks that allow it to proactively embrace or keep at bay new innovations that are taking place.

Shared mobility enterprises have been very proactive in providing options to commuters since the odd/even programme announcement. The transport department should think progressively and ensure shared mobility providers help improve the transport choices citizens have.