The report captures the
current state of mobility in India, including the infrastructure as well as the
various forms. Thereafter it goes on to define the challenges faced by mobility
in terms of capacity , capacity utilisation as well as issues plaguing it e.g.
pollution, safety, affordability. Lastly, it details a vision for the future of
mobility, stated Ashim Sharma, Partner & Group Head – Business Performance
Improvement (Auto, Engineering & Logistics), NRI (Nomura Research
Institute) Consulting & Solutions.
The report was unveiled by key
stakeholders from the industry that included Abhay Damle, Anil Srivastava,
Saurabh Kumar, Chetan Maini, Mahesh Bajaj, Vikram Gulati and Rahul Bharti.
The report mentioned that the geographical
expanse of India, and dispersion of points of production and consumption make
transport sector a crucial driver for GDP growth. Road infrastructure plays a
major role in on-surface transportation of both goods and passenger traffic in
India, carrying 2,871 Bn Tonne km of freight as well as 18,109 Bn Passenger Km
annually. However, the quality of our roads needs improvement. On an average,
trucks in India cover about 250-300 km per day as against 700-800 km in
developed countries. In our cities, congestion leads to drastic drops in speed
with average speed in Delhi being around 26 kmph. The World Economic Forum
ranks India as 55th in terms of road infrastructure.
The report further said that within cities there are also
multiple challenges on account of heterogeneity of traffic e.g. slow speed
e-rickshaws sharing roads with cars that leads to immense zig –zag movement and
hence congestion. Besides this, a lack of parking facilities aggravates the
issue by increasing congestion due to roadside parking, creating reluctance in
switching to public transport with the first and last mile being in private
vehicles due to limited parking at metro stations, etc. Lack of proper parking
areas for app- based cabs which stay on the road for as long as 8-12 hours also
leads to high congestion on busy roads.
The report noted that though buses
are a popular mode of transport here, India, with a penetration of about 1.7
buses per 1,000 people, however, lags behind countries such as Thailand (8.6),
South Africa (6.5), USA (2.7). Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) corridors have also
not been able to succeed in most of our cities with Ahmedabad and Surat being
the only outliers.
Metro and mono rail
infrastructure is also growing in Indian cities. The ridership is still not
very high compared to other global cities. For instance, the ridership per km
in Delhi is 10, 879 as against 14,593 in Shanghai, 14,467 in New York and
27,811 in Sao Paolo. On top of that, cities other than Delhi do not have an
expansive metro network, the report said..
Additionally, low quality
infrastructure and poor on-time performance, uncoordinated timetables, lack of
connections at transfer stops, buying new ticket with every change of mode and
no single authority to maintain and coordinate urban transit network lead to
fewer people opting for public transport. As a result, ¾th of the 227 Mn vehicles running on roads are
two wheelers with several people also using inefficient intermediate public
transport such as shared Autos, E-Rickshaws, over crowded vans, coupled with
journeys on foot.
All these factors have led to
hazardous levels of pollution in cities. As a case in point, while the number
of vehicles per km in Delhi (using registration data) is 176, the Air Quality
Index (AQI) is (Hazardous) 457 while London with 220 vehicles per km has an AQI
of 58 (Moderate) and Tokyo with 132 vehicles per km has an AQI of 66.
Therefore, dust on roads, construction dust and to some extent other forms of
vehicles e.g. heavy trucks plying through cities are a big contributor to the
high city pollution levels. In addition, while the overall number of road
accidents has decreased, an increasing severity of accidents has emerged as a
major challenge. About 11 people per
100,000 were killed in road accidents in 2014, said the report.