Why this congestion?

Traffic congestion is a big urban challenge. It has eluded a sustainable solution for decades. Policymakers, urban planners and academics are deeply involved in figuring a way out of the mess on our city streets. Road congestion results in several problems – primarily those of vehicular emissions, safety, and loss of productivity, in addition to driver stress, irritability and other psychological outcomes. It is worthwhile then to understand the causes of road congestion before one can get down to addressing it. An attempt is made here. At the first instance, one is tempted to believe that there are so many more vehicles on the roads without commensurate increase in road area. While the motor vehicle sales and thus their population have indeed grown exponentially over the years, the growth in motorable roads has not been as impressive. This seems to be at the root of the problem. But let us look more closely. Here, we have used the TomTom Traffic Index Ranking 2022, which ranks cities on the severity of traffic congestion. It has ranked the cities on average time taken for a 10 Km trip in the city. The higher the time taken, higher is the level of congestion. Attempt has been made to correlate this with the vehicles (motor cars) density. Credible, recent data for such car density was not currently available; therefore an attempt has been made to estimate it. The number of motor cars sold in the country in 2022 divided by the total land area of the country (the 2 credible data points) was used to estimate the car density.

Japan which sold over 4 million cars in 2022 with a tiny land mass of 0.38 million sqr kms has a very high density of 11.05 cars per sqr km. Therefore Japanese cities must face lots of congestion. However as per the Index quoted earlier, Sapporo is the only Japanese city high on the index at No.4. Tokyo a populous, prosperous city, is expected to be very congested. But it is way down at No.22. Germany a country with small land mass sold almost 3 million cars with a high density of 7.5 cars per sq km. While congestion is expected to be high, the most congested city is Hamburg at No. 23. India though having a modest density (due to large land area) of 1.15 cars per sq. km, Bengaluru and Pune figure high on the congestion index at No. 2 and No 6 respectively. Thus it seems that there is no definite direct correlation between density of vehicles and the level of congestion.

As far as Indian roads are concerned, one will be amazed at the huge diversity in the composition of the traffic on the roads. One can find a vast variety from bicycles to scooters and motorcycles, to passenger and load carrying three wheelers, to cars, buses, trucks, earthmoving equipment, to sometimes even buffalos, goats and camels. All these on the same carriageway with no lane segregation. This mixed nature of traffic on our roads presents challenges for efficient mobility and for safety. Compare this with the composition of traffic on a Japanese or a German city road; we may find largely cars moving at uniform speed, with segregation for heavy vehicles.

There are surely other reasons for traffic congestion. They all need deeper study and appropriate regulatory solutions.