car congestion in Mumbai – The Metrognome

Trupti Amritwar Vaitla explains how we all are paying for road infrastructure that caters to a small proportion of people.

Read Part I of the series here.

Yesterday, we featured Part I of Nidhi Qazi‘s interview with Trupti Vaitla (see pic on left), Chief of Operations at Mumbai Environment and Social Network (MESN), and also the head of Rachana Sansad’s Urban Design Cell. In the concluding part of the ‘City of carcentricity’ series today, Trupti explains how the majority pay for a small proportion of users’ car infrastructure by way of taxes and more.

Nidhi: Why this car-centric approach? Whom does this approach benefit and how?

Trupti: The projects in the city are car-centric as cars are a big business for many, like the car manufacturing industry, the road infrastructure industry and many car-related service industries. There is also a belief that car industry provides employment to a large number of people, and so, going against it is as good as going against the employment of working class.

We have a big impact of American lifestyle, where people live in sparse suburbs and are totally dependent on cars for mobility. For us, this model means ‘being developed’ and we are imitating them blindly in our cities which are dense, compact and actually ideal for mass transit. America is now seriously rethinking its car-centric ways which have proved unsustainable.

Our politicians, policy makers, bureaucrats and other authorities, are all car users, and view the entire situation from that lens and believe that owning a car is progressive and getting car infrastructure is the motorist’s right.

Big infrastructure projects like highways, freeways, sea links and flyovers which require huge investments, and are justified seeing the congestion on the road, but what causes that congestion never gets highlighted either by politicians, authorities or even by media.

N: How much does the government spend on the public transport system?

T: While in Mumbai, public transport carries 70 per cent passenger trips (down from 80 per cent about a decade back), the expenditure by users of public transport is less than 6 per cent. On the other hand, users spend more than 70 per cent on private transport which caters to barely 12 to 15 per cent of trips.

All the Western and Central railway suburban stations and tracks were completed by 1925, and since then, there was very little investment in upgradation till 2004 except in Navi Mumbai stations after Mankhurd. During the last 10 years, due to MUTP 1 (Mumbai Urban Transport Project) and MUTP 2 there was an investment of about Rs 2,000 crore for replacing the old tracks, coaches and extension of platform.

Recently some investment up to Rs 4,000 crore is made for the metro and monorails. Also 1,000 new buses more were bought under JNNURM, where half were in lieu of grant and the rest were bought by the Municipal Corporation. Of these, 600 were to replace the old buses and only 400 were added to the existing fleet. There is no investment in any kind of bus system to improve its efficiency. About Rs 8 to Rs 10,000 crore were spent on highways, the Sea Link and flyovers within Mumbai in the past 10 years.

N: Can you give us a comparison between the taxes paid by buses and car-users? Why is there a difference? What are the solutions?

T: Depending on the cost of the vehicle, the private vehicles have to pay a lumpsum one time tax of 7 to 14 per cent for an individual and 14 per cent to 20 per cent for a company-owned vehicle for a lifetime. A bus has to pay tax annually and on per seat basis, depending on the type of vehicle (like basic, luxury, and AC bus). It is estimated that buses, considering a life of seven to eight years, pay 25 to 30 per cent tax i.e. two to three times higher than the private cars ! Also buses have to pay sales tax of 3 per cent on the sale of the tickets.

We also have a street tax which is based on the property value at 15 per cent and not on the vehicle value or size. If we have pro-public transport policy, then why, under our tax regime, do buses pay much more than private vehicles? Why don’t we have taxation or road user fees that are designed to restrain private vehicle ownership and tilt in favour of buses? Also why can’t we charge nearer the real and total cost of parking spaces? Such rationalisation is easy and will make a great difference in favour of public transport usage.

It’s a Catch-22 situation, where it is unrealistic to expect migration from private transport to pay heavy charges and expect people to travel in the poor public transport. At the same time, it is not possible to wait for public transport to improve to restrain the growing numbers of private vehicles.

The basic rule is that mass transit can improve mobility, but it cannot solve congestion. Congestion can be solved only by a restraint on private vehicles and provision of good public transport. Both measures need to happen simultaneously to achieve a sustainable mobility. Instead of time consuming options like the metro rail to improve mass transit, this city needs solutions like improving the buses with dedicated lanes or BRTs, which are time and money efficient ways but which need vision, will and discipline.

Organising the existing intermediate public transport fleets like autos and taxies with dial system and shared routes to optimise its use and provide effective last mile connectivity.

Besides, we should focus on improving information and ticketing systems for better utilisation of public transport.

(Featured image courtesy purveshg.blogspot.com. Trupti’s pic courtesy bmwguggenheimlab.org)

The city of carcentricity – Part I

The first of a two-part series on why public transport, and not cars, is the ideal solution for Mumbai’s roads.

Trupti Amritwar Vaitla (see pic on left), Chief of Operations at Mumbai Environment and Social Network (MESN), and also the head of Rachana Sansad’s Urban Design Cell, throws light on the state of public transport in Mumbai and the loopholes therein – the biggest one being the shift of focus from public transport to a private, car-centric model one that the city has resorted to.

Excerpts from an email interview that Nidhi Qazi conducted with her:

Nidhi: What is the increase in the number of cars seen on the roads in the past decade? How has that impacted the public transport system of Mumbai?

Trupti: As reported by MMRDA in its latest compilation of Basic Transport Statistics in Mumbai, the growth for the last 20 years is 214 per cent of four-wheelers (4W) and 432 per cent of two-wheelers (2W). If we consider also the growth together with Thane city, it is 2875 per cent of 4W and 1500 per cent for 2W.

This drastic growth, particularly in Thane district, is very striking and the reason is that many vehicles whose owners are residents of Mumbai get their vehicles registered in Thane to avoid paying octroi duty.

The huge growth in two wheelers indicates that bus users are shifting to this mode of private vehicles, which is affordable, faster and convenient till the last mile. On the other hand, the BEST bus trips have remained constant for the last 10 years on account of being stuck in traffic congestion (thus reducing its speed and reliability thus becoming further unpopular and losing usership).

According to a National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP) report, “Millions of man hours (and fuel) are lost with people ‘stuck in traffic’. The primary reason for this has been the explosive growth in the number of motor vehicles, coupled with limitations on the road space that can be provided as it is a very expensive infrastructure.”

Today in Mumbai, this congestion has impacted the efficiency of buses, and intermediate public transport like taxies and autos, (and even cars) as they are unable to complete the required number of trips to carry more passengers with better frequency (although the number of buses has increased by 50 per cent during the last 10 years).

N: The reason for such an increase in the number of cars?

T: On the one hand, the deteriorating quality of public transport and on the other hand private transport is getting more attractive, cheaper and easily available.

Potential car buyers are increasing with increasing income levels between the 25 to 30 age group. Car prices have gone down, and now provide better quality, reliability and fuel efficiency and are available with easy car loans with reduced interest rates, and with no waiting period.

Most importantly, billions of rupees are spent on car advertisements to sell dreams to young potential buyers, increasing their aspirations. And if this is not enough, all our mega road projects are adding further fuel to this fire by providing dreams of more road widening, highways and freeways. And easy loans on attractive terms are available for asking – a thing unheard of until recently!

N: What does ‘equitable road space’ mean? Where does the city stand on that front?

T: I would like to refer to the NUTP report, which says “At present, road space gets allocated to whichever vehicle occupies it first. The focus is, therefore, the vehicle and not people. The result is that a bus carrying 40 people is allocated only two and a half times the road space that is allocated to a car carrying only one or two persons. In this process, the lower income groups have, effectively, ended up paying, in terms of higher travel time and higher travel costs, for the disproportionate space allocated to personal vehicles. If the focus of the principles of road space allocation were to be the people, then much more space would need to be allocated to public transport systems than is allocated at present.”

In Mumbai, road space allocation for buses is less than 10 per cent, taxi, autos is about 20 per cent and private transport is about 60 per cent, while commercial vehicles is about 10 per cent. Exactly reverse is the ratio of passengers carried by each mode, where buses carry more than 65 per cent passengers, taxi auto about 20 per cent and private vehicles 15 per cent.

A study done by transport policy institute shows comparative per person travel space needs. A bus commuter requires 75 sq ft space travelling in a bus at 50km/hr, whereas a person travelling in the car occupies 250 sq ft while standing and about 1,500 sq ft moving at a speed of 50km/hr. Each car requires at least three car parking spaces in the city, one at home, other at office and third at shopping and other activities. Each parking space demands not less than 400 sq ft which is more than an affordable dwelling unit for four persons. This clearly indicates how space intensive the cars are and the tremendous pressure on the road infrastructure.

In the last 10 years, many highways, flyovers and the Sea Link have got built in the name of solving congestion in our city. When MESN did the traffic count, we realised that on an average 2 per cent buses, 23 per cent taxi/auto and 75 per cent cars ply on flyovers; on the Sea Link, less than 1 per cent buses, less than 10 per cent taxi and above 90 per cent cars.

The buses do not take the flyovers and also the fast links like Sea Link and the new Eastern freeway have very few entry or exit points, which again discourage bus usage, as they need more stops with easy accessibility. This clearly indicates that these big infrastructure projects are not pro-public transport and are in effect, getting subsidised by non-users’ tax money.

Road transport projects require large investment and cannot be self-sustaining through users’ fee alone; they need some viability gap funds. Giving such funding to public transport is acceptable all over the world as it is in the interest of many. However, in the case of Mumbai, unfortunately all the road transport projects are in effect, car-centric.

Part II, tomorrow: How non-car users are paying for the upkeep of cars and infrastructure that supports them.

(Featured image courtesy akshardhool.com. Trupti’s pic courtesy bmwguggenheimlab.org)