Odd-even formula may only result in partial benefits

By Ashwin Mahesh

What's better? Forcing people to do the right things or mak ing it easier for them to choose those things? Depending on which of these approaches you prefer, you might see the two new developments in Delhi -the alternate day vehicle use scheme and the NGT's order on banning registration of diesel vehicles -as either uninformed hack ideas or necessary draconian measures in the face of a desperate situation. That's why , when people ask if Bengaluru should try these too, my answer is that “we don't need to“ if we do some smart things instead.

The answer to rising volumes of vehicular traffic in cities has remained the same for decades -more public transport, more walkability and cycling lanes, more shared use of vehicles and better design of the city to integrate work, play and living. What this means is that if we find ourselves contemplating drastic action one fine day , then we've really been sleeping on the job for a number of years before that day.

Even today , it is not too late to embrace the right choices and to do so on a massive scale. Triple the BMTC fleet to 18,000 buses and allocate Rs 300 crore in operating subsidies each year to run them. Build cycle and walking lanes around every lake and around many large campuses of government entities. This alone will produce more than 2,000 km of non-motorised transport. Make TenderSURE specs the standard on all major roads -about 500 of them. Create station access plans for each Metro station in a radius of one km around it. And put a price on street parking.

What will these things achieve?
Simple. They will make it easier for people to choose the things we want them to and avoid the things that harm the city . When the BIG system on Hosur Road was expanded, the introduction of 65 new buses on the trunk route moved 15,000 people from other modes of transport to bus.These are the kinds of successes that we should be repeating. BMTC is surely doing this but without a massive infusion of cash, it can only do this slowly.

What we need in many aspects of urban governance today is speed.The problems in the city are running at 100 kmph and our solutions are often running at 1 kmph and sometimes even in the opposite direction.Unless we create a mechanism for responding to the challenges with the speed at which they arise, we cannot hope to ever make the city livable for everyone. What about Delhi itself ? Based on the experience of experiments elsewhere in the world, we can only hope for limited success from the new proposal. Beyond the question of what the scheme does to traffic in the city is the question whether pollution is impacted by the transport sector alone. Improving the quality of fossil fuels can also help cut down the pervehicle emissions considerably and this is another step that is much easier to phase in.

All of us are hopeful that we will one day , soon, begin to solve the problems that our cities face. But we should not fall into the trap of seeing the solutions as merely technical or managerial. The truth is, our problems are political and social. And it is in these arenas that we must look for lasting answers.

(The writer is an urban planning expert)