Transport Challenged People in Bangalore

Sudhir Gota writes a very interesting & thought provoking post, Behind Bangalore’s Growth, A New Species Is Born: Transport Challenged People on The City Fix. An excerpt:

Bangalore’s urban sprawl was aided by the economic boom, during which income levels of certain industries skyrocketed. The rising income combined with long travel times, poor public transportation facilities and the glamor and hype generated by the automobile industry powered the vehicular boom on the roads. The government’s efforts to make the city more car-friendly had a boomerang effect with a virtual multiplication of private automobiles on the road. In fact, the motorization index nearly doubled from 178 in 1996 to 361 in 2006. Presently, private automobiles – two wheelers, cars, taxis etc. – make up nearly 88% of the vehicles on Bangalore’s streets. Yet that accounts for just 39% of trips. Thus it can be concluded that Bangalore has high congestion not because it lacks roads– a claim that advocates of road construction routinely make – but because there are so many private vehicles moving so few people.

And, his concluding statement is spot-on…

It’s time to start planning for people and not vehicles. Accessibility and not mobility should be the primary concern of the planners and government.

Here’s a paper that Sudhir Gota & Prashant Mutalik have published on a related topic: Congestion to Demotorisation – A paradigm shift for Bangalore (PDF).

Times of India’s now started a new initiative (I’m guessing, encouraged by the success of the ‘Lead India’ initiative): ‘Unlock Bangalore – Let’s put the bang back in Bangalore‘.

e-bike in Bangalore

Very interesting looking vehicle spotted in K.R.Puram (Bangalore) few weeks ago. I managed to take a hurried & blurry picture of this “e-bike”. Does anyone knows more about this?

Low-cost cars…dream or nightmare?

Vijay Sambav writes an open letter to Ratan Tata about Ratan Tata’s “dream project” Rs. 1-lakh car (approximately $2500). I found some of the comments posted by readers at the bottom of the page especially interesting…healthy (and even amusing) debate on the pros & cons of this project.

Quite timely, considering I’ve been mulling over this myself. It’s not the first time somebody’s brought up the potential issues with creating an automobile explosion in a country that is still catching up on basic infrastructural needs. This older story on Rediff looked at this project in the context of the boom in the US several decades ago…

The impact of a robust car industry cemented the US economy but it also led to a car mania that is yet to lose its grip over the world’s richest nation.

As of 2002, there were 590 million passenger cars worldwide. This means that there was roughly one car for every eleven people worldwide. The US statistics were, however, quite different. In 2002, it had 140 million cars: meaning there was one car for every two people in United States! Cheap car loans, affordable cars due to the economies of scale and a very large manufacturing base made Americans own cars as if their lives depended on it.

It is the American passion for cars that has seen the US become one of the biggest guzzlers of gasoline. Americans consume up 9,495,000 barrel of light distillates (mostly gasoline) every day. This constitutes 45 per cent of America’s consumption of all categories of fuel.

I can also see several similarities in the way the aviation industry has taken off (no pun intended) in the last few years in India. Since Air Deccan kicked off the ‘low-cost, no frills’ concept in India few years ago, the aviation industry hasn’t been the same.

But the impact is significant…airports in most major cities in India weren’t prepared to deal with the upsurge in air travel in the country. Infrastructure in most of these airports is only now getting upgraded.

The irony, given all the heated discussions about an ecological impact of this project, is when you visit the Tata Motors website. Corporate social responsibility seems to be big on their agenda…

“It (Tata Motors) is a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact, and is engaged in community and social initiatives on labour and environment standards in compliance with the principles of the Global Compact.”

“Tata Motors has planted as many as 80,000 trees in the works and the township and more than 2.4 million trees have been planted in Jamshedpur region. Over half a million trees have been planted in the Poona region. Tata Motors has directed all its suppliers to package their products in alternate material instead of wood.”

Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be much (or any?) mention about investing or partnering with the government in improving the road infrastructure in the country.

On a different note…If my last name was anywhere close to “Tata”, one of my “dream projects” would probably be to have 1 billion people ride around on bicycles!

An inconvenient truth

Another scary/inconvenient reminder to the mind-boggling documentary I saw several months ago. This one’s about the Plastic Ocean.

“A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility…and worse.”

What I’m experiencing is the lack of clarity about what can I do in my life to make a difference. Of course, there’s the small and most obvious steps like not littering, avoiding (or is it stopping?) the use of plastic, being prudent about water consumption, etc. But, the problem seems to demand proportionally significant measures, to counter the damage we’ve done. And none of the news stories or articles I’ve read so far provide any specific steps that we, as individuals, can start practicing in our daily life. If you have found something to that effect, please do share.