Urban spaces await sustainable mobility

Mobility is no longer about getting from one place to another. In today’s world, mobility means being able to access education, health, culture, employment, and ability to participate in the society. In urban areas, the way people get around is changing rapidly. Governments around the globe, slowly but steadily, have started looking for sustainable transport methods, which can provide safe and affordable mobility without impacting the health of urban residents and the environment.

Currently, all across the globe, cars dominate urban areas, taking up a lot of space, adding to air and noise pollution, and restricting the flow of traffic. Developing countries, which are witnessing a swell in their population and growth in economies, are seeing rapid rise in the number of cars on city roads, where often only a single person is travelling in a four or six seater car, which ultimately results in public transport such as buses, trams and autos getting stuck in traffic for hours, thereby nullifying the very purpose of convenient mobility.
A project called Connective Cities revealed that in contrast to developing Asian countries, Europe is seeing a fall in the number of trips taken by a private car. People have increasingly started using local public transport, bicycles or car-sharing schemes. According to the data released by Connective Cities, in Berlin, private cars are being used for 31 per cent of all trips, while the rest are being undertaken in a more environmentally friendly way, which includes on foot (30 per cent), using local public transport (26 per cent) or by using a bicycle (13 per cent). In Copenhagen, bicycles are actually the most frequently used means of transport, and in London, more people travel by underground metro, bus or rail than by private car.

Countries setting precedent on low carbon mobility

Paris has been pioneering innovations for low carbon mobility and has been putting efforts in making alternative modes of transport attractive. Streets all over the city have been dug up to build more cycling lanes; central squares such as the Bastille and Madeleine have been transformed to be more pedestrian-and-cyclist-friendly; residents and visitors can now glide along the car-free river banks of the Seine; the Grand Paris Express project is underway with more than 41.5 billion euros’ investment and will make it easier for metropolitan area residents to reduce the use of private cars. It was estimated that car ownership had dropped from 60 per cent of all households in 2001 to 35 per cent in 2019.
Paris has started walking the climate change talk. The city’s mayor Anne Hidalgo is all set to ban all diesel cars from the city from 2024, and to ban all petrol cars by 2030. She has pledged to plant more than 1,70,000 trees across the capital by 2026, with the aim of converting 50 per cent of the city into planted areas by 2030. To do so, the French government has loosened building codes, so it is much easier for Parisians to plant trees in their neighbourhoods. The French government had also announced an increase in fossil fuel tax in late 2017, along with rebates on purchase of electric vehicles.

Paris has started walking the climate change talk. The city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, is all set to ban all diesel cars from the city from 2024, and to ban all petrol cars by 2030. She has, has pledged to plant more than 1,70,000 trees across the capital by 2026, with the aim of covering 50 per cent of the city by planted areas by 2030

The Norwegian government focused most of its effort of promoting alternative energy sources in transport, with generous incentives for electric vehicles: zero import duty, VAT, and road tax; toll-free travel for plug-in cars; publicly financed charging stations, etc. As a result, Norway has the highest per capita number of all-electric (battery only) cars in the world, with electric vehicles representing 47 per cent of the nation’s newly registered passenger cars in June 2018.
Strategies taken up by cities like Paris have visibly inspired India as its first pop-up cycle lane was developed and introduced in Bangalore in 2020. Even Gurugram introduced its first dedicated cycle track along a 10 km long corridor under the Centre’s Cycle4Change programme to promote green transit in the city. Increasing green cover and making cities more pedestrian and cyclist friendly is a great concept that India can adopt and include in its flagship Smart City Mission.

How far is India from smart urban mobility?

Transport demand in most Indian cities has rapidly increased, owing to the multifold increase in urban population, which is a result of both birth rates and migration. This, and increase in commercial and industrial activities, has led to demand outstripping the capacity of urban Indian roads. This has resulted in widespread, increased congestion and delays in Indian cities, indicating the seriousness of transport problems. A high level of pollution has come up as another result of the overloaded streets, along with the prevalence of traffic accidents. The Government of India realised that cities cannot afford to cater to only private cars and two-wheelers, and that cities would become inoperable without a feasible and accessible local public transport system. Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance said that the central government is set on working towards raising the share of public transport in urban areas through the expansion of the metro rail network and augmentation of city bus service. Sitharaman also announced the government’s plan to introduce two new technologies – ‘MetroLite’ and ‘MetroNeo’ to provide metro rail systems at a much lesser cost with the same experience, convenience and safety in tier-2 cities and peripheral areas of tier-1 cities. However, these metro projects pose a challenge in the form of land acquisition.
In 2019, green activists and local residents protested and threw light on how the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation was cutting trees and clearing huge areas of the Aarey forest for Metro-3 project and construction of a car shed. Delhi learnt a lesson from the case and has received permission from the Supreme Court of India to transplant trees from a plot next to the current Parliament building to an area close to the artificial ponds near the India Gate. This solution was proposed to avoid cutting down of all trees for the Central Vista redevelopment project. However, experts differ in their opinions on the concept of transplantation of trees. According to C.R. Babu, professor emeritus at the Centre for Environment Management of Degraded Ecosystems at Delhi University, transplantation of trees is a complex process and many native and deep-rooted trees often cannot tolerate transplantation.
Tree transplantation nowadays involves lopping off the big branches of the tree, to which C R Babu said that a tree without its canopy will have no ecological function. Whereas, the forest department is set to empanel technical agencies to conduct the transplantation after making a feasibility report and has also set the target of the survival rate of transplanted trees at 80 per cent. The success of this technique could help ensure that no city loses its much needed green cover, although the cost of transplantation of trees is sky high.
Currently, only in the national capital, public bus system in its entirety runs on CNG. Additionally, Delhi is the only city in India having the facility of CNG pumps for commercial vehicles. Therefore, even if the government increases the number of buses in cities for public transit, issues of vehicular emissions and air pollution remain.

Is the world entering the decade of electric vehicles?

Cars are responsible for a huge chunk of carbon emissions that are ejected into our atmosphere, leaving us vulnerable to various respiratory diseases. Electric vehicles (EVs) are being seen as a great step towards eco-friendly mobility. EVs get their power from rechargeable batteries installed inside the car and are 100 per cent eco-friendly and do not emit any toxic gas or smoke.
Under the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and EV (FAME-II) scheme, India is aiming to deploy nearly 2,600 EV charging stations across the country starting in 2020. This looks like a good start, but there is a need for rapidly scaling up charging infrastructure, and primary battery cell manufacturing in India with the help of strong economic and policy drivers.