Rethink mobility, ditch the motor

Rethinking mobility is now a global priority to build better, safer, more resilient, efficient, and sustainable transport systems for all. Sustainable transport is largely measured by system effectiveness and efficiency as well as the social, environmental, and climate impacts of the system.

Sustainable transport was the theme of UN Global Road Safety Week, which was observed this year from May 15–21 to underline the need to rethink mobility and for policy initiatives to facilitate a shift to walking, cycling, and using public transport.

Also Read: What ails India’s multimodal mobility plans?

Though transport is a crucial driver of economic and social development, the sector generates the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions, which primarily come from burning fossil fuel in vehicles. In 2021, CO2 emissions from transport in India were 286 metric tonnes.

Mobility can help drive positive social change in many areas of society, promoting secure and equal access to employment, education, and health and impacting favourably on several of the broader Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to poverty, gender, and sustainable consumption and production.

In this context, there is a dire need for governments and other stakeholders to rethink mobility. This includes increasing investments in walking, cycling, and enhancing public transport, modes of transport that can promote equity and health for people and the planet.

A prerequisite for rethinking mobility is to put safety at its core and ensure that roads are safe for all users. Historically, most of the world’s roads have been designed for cars. There is a need to redesign streets for people, starting with those most vulnerable and at risk of injury: children and adolescents, people with disabilities, pedestrians, cyclists, and users of public transport.

Making way for more walking and cycling can have a favourable impact on health and the environment through reductions in non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and decreased air and noise pollution.

India has planned its cities in such a way that while motorised vehicles rule the roads, pedestrians, cyclists, and users of public transport face an existential crisis. The number of vulnerable road users (VRUs), including motorcyclists, pedestrians, and cyclists, killed in crashes in 2021 in India, touched 1 lakh, increasing the share of the VRUs in total fatalities to 67 per cent.

However, the Indian bicycle industry is the second-largest in the world; 55 per cent of Indian households have a bicycle, according to the findings of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), carried out by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (May, 2022).

Also Read: Bengaluru the world's second most congested city after London: Report

An estimated 45 million people walk to work daily, which is 31 per cent of Indian workers in urban and rural areas. During the pandemic lockdown, there was a tremendous increase in the number of walkers and cyclists. However, these numbers are rapidly declining, with safety and a lack of infrastructure being the main reasons.

Non-Motorised Transport (NMT) is a sustainable mode of transport that provides accessibility to all while having minimum emissions. The Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) has initiated various programmes to encourage Indian cities to adopt NMT. The National Mission for Sustainable Habitat (NMSH), under the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan on Climate Change, constituted a sub-committee specifically focusing on urban transport systems under MoUD in 2015. Among the eight principles of sustainable urban transportation listed out by the sub-committee, "walking" and "cycling" were the focus.

All these policies aim to arrest the current decline in walking and cycling in the city by creating a safe and pleasant network of footpaths, cycle tracks, greenways, and other NMT facilities.

However, a review of these policies and programmes suggests that they have not yielded the desired results. For example, Bengaluru has about 10 to 15 km of exclusive cycle lanes (April 2023), but the demand is 2,000 km. Even according to the Comprehensive Mobility Plan by DULT (Directorate of Urban Land Transport), the city of Bengaluru was supposed to have 50 km by 2022. This is a typical example of how our cities are lagging in creating NMT infrastructure.

Even though the benefits are numerous, there are key challenges related to NMT in India, which include encroachment on NMT infrastructure, lack of proper street design, lack of focus on a proper institutional framework, improper divergence of funds for NMT, disjointed policies and goals, and a lack of integration of different transportation modes. The governments, and civil societies must collectively rethink mobility and address these challenges to make sustainable transportation a reality in Indian cities.

(The writer is a consumer activist and an expert on road safety.)