India’s Urban Mobility and Congestion Problem

Trends influencing urban mobility in India

  • Urbanisation trends and patterns present unprecedented challenges to urban mobility systems.
  • Rapid motorisation: Since 2001, the number of vehicles per 1,000 people in Indian metropolitan cities has grown significantly.
  • Dwindling share of non-motorised transportation includes walking, bicycling, and other variants such as small-wheeled transport.

Various urban transport problems and challenges

  • Road Congestion: As populations increase, the average travel distances as well as intensity are expected to increase.
  • Parking Problem: The acute shortage of parking spaces both on and off the streets in Indian cities increases the time spent searching for a parking spot and induces traffic congestion.
  • Air pollution: Air pollution in Indian cities is the fifth leading cause of death in India.
  • Deteriorating road safety: increasing number of fatalities and road accidents.
  • Roads in cities are multi-purpose infrastructures.
  • Gaps in laws and regulation.
  • Fragmented institution framework.
  • Distorted land markets affecting transport infrastructure development.
  • Comprehensive design standards for transport infrastructure lacking.
  • Human Resource challenges.
  • Absence of reliable transport data.
  • Inefficiencies of the present day public transport systems.
  • Energy security and sustainability.

Policy responses to address urban transport issues

  • National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP) 2006
    • Aims to create sustainable, safe, affordable, quick and reliable transport facilities.
    • The policy acknowledged problems of road congestion and associated air pollution.
    • The NUTP proposed traffic management instruments, restraining growth of private vehicular traffic, technological improvements in vehicles and fuels, and favouring public transport.
  • Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT)
    • Providing basic services such as transportation, building mobility amenities, etc. have become priority.
    • The focus is on infrastructure creation that has a direct link to provision of better services to people.

Understanding the problem of congestion

  • A popular view is that urbanization leads to ever larger cities and increased rates of motorization. These two features eventually lead to a complete gridlock and congestion.
  • However, economic growth also brings about better travel infrastructure, which facilitates uncongested mobility and increases the pace of urban mobility.
  • Indian cities have experienced both these trends. These changes are taking place at a much faster pace in India than in the UK and the US.
  • Transportation investments constitute the largest component of lending of many global development institutions.
  • Data on urban transportation in India is scarce. In the UK and the US, knowledge on urban mobility and congestion stems from surveys of household travel behaviour.
  • However, such surveys are prohibitively expensive to carry out in India. We used other methods to examine urban mobility and congestion.
  • World Bank used a popular web mapping and transportation service to generate information for more than 22 million trips across 154 large Indian cities.
  • The multi-purpose nature of urban transport also impacts urban mobility in India.

Location: Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

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