Cities choked, but 90% of Indians don't own vehicle

NEW DELHI: Even as cities reel under the growing burden of private vehicles, government data shows that nearly 90% of Indians don't own a vehicle. This points to the need to scale up public transport, both to provide affordable travel options to such citizens and to prevent them from buying private vehicles and adding to the traffic chaos.

According to government estimates, there are 18.64 crore vehicles in the country, including two-wheelers. Of these, 18 lakh are buses, which include a large number of mini buses and buses owned by schools and other educational institutions. Worryingly, only 1.6 lakh buses are owned by state road transport undertakings ( SRTUs), which serve as the main mode of mass ro ad transport across states.

The government is now preparing a roadmap to revitalise state public transport bodies as part of its `Move in India' scheme, which will be announced soon. This will be linked to the programme of building national highways and widening existing ones to provide connectivity to most parts of the country.

Under the scheme, SRTUs will get more funds.“They will be able to procure more buses using the money and take measures to improve their efficiency.

Those bringing reforms and doing well will get incentive of more funds,“ a source from the transport ministry said.

Records show that the share of buses in the total number of vehicles has decreased from 10% in 1951 to only 1% now. There is hardly any indication of this changing any time soon as two-wheelers have become the preferred replacement for public transport both in urban and rural areas.

A government official admitted that in all these years, little attention was given to improve roadbased public transport and whatever was done was confined to the city bus sector.

The Centre is also taking a host of measures to liberalise the bus permit system. In the amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act, the transport ministry has proposed easing permit norms for buses in rural areas to promote last-mile connectivity.