Opinion - News Analysis   

Can cheaper cars move faster?

G. Ananthakrishnan

The car may appear to be more affordable now. However, restrictions on its use such as congestion charging, costlier parking, and reduced right of way in favour of buses, pedestrians, and cyclists may be inevitable.

— Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.

GRIDLOCKED: Bangalore is one of the cities worst affected by the explosion in the number of vehicles on the road.

THERE HAS never been a better time to buy a car it would appear after the Union budget slashed excise duty. The eight per cent duty reduction for the small car has translated into a tangible and immediate lowering of the sticker price by up to Rs. 25,000.

Much of the middle class views cheaper cars as a form of social justice, a somewhat belated correction introduced to an iniquitous system that has historically favoured the wealthy minority. Affordable cars, many think, also provide freedom from the hazardous, uncomfortable, and grossly insufficient buses in the public transport system and costly alternatives such as autorickshaws and taxis.

Even before the latest price reduction, car sales registered strong growth since the availability of hire purchase on affordable terms. Things are even better after the budget — cars that breach the promised one-lakh price barrier seem very feasible.

Sales of passenger cars, already enjoying strong growth from the start of the present decade, are bound to grow even faster. The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers says 567,728 passenger cars were sold in 2000-01 and four years later, sales touched 819,918.

The car is promoted heavily as a symbol of independence, comfort, and efficiency, and, above all, unfettered mobility. Those who wait for buses are forlorn figures, literally left out in the cold, waiting for the kindly soul to provide a lift in a car. Children are proud of fathers who can buy a "big car."

Reality is different from advertising spots. In the urban context such creative images of freedom are replaced by the reality of gridlocked traffic, road rage, health impacts, higher accident rates, and, above all, a reduction in mobility. Travel times are actually becoming longer as a result of "automobilisation."

Perhaps the best-known example of urban travel stress at a peak, with steady growth in private car (and two-wheeler) ownership is Bangalore. The discourse in Karnataka's capital has shifted to the need for public transit options as the default travel mode. Many other cities in early stages of gridlock are also actively considering investments in rail and bus systems.

The imperative for public transit remains strong. During the time that it takes to put such systems in place, the States may have to meet the challenges of a rising car population. This is inevitable given the pressure that a sharp rise in the number of cars will exert on the poor civic infrastructure available even in the biggest cities today.

Most apartment blocks do not have adequate parking slots if the majority of residents opt to own cars; parking facilities in public places are also scarce and there is increasing pressure to carve out road space currently serving pedestrians, cyclists and buses, to facilitate car parking.

Compulsion to park on the kerb also raises the risk of theft and vandalism, besides the threat of policing penalties. While some of these issues can be addressed through policy interventions for short-term relief, the wider issue of declining efficiency caused by congestion, exemplified by the Bangalore experience, is unlikely to be mitigated.

Chennai's experience, which is not exceptional, indicates that State Governments and municipal administrations are following civic policies that are in no position to handle rising car ownership. In its policy note for 2005-06 on Housing and Urban Development, the Tamil Nadu Government identifies nine intra-city sites for planned development of parking facilities in the State capital (some of them contentious from an environmental perspective because they privilege automobiles over other road users), but as the year draws to a close, these projects have not progressed to any appreciable degree. Another project announced at the start of the year, on creating a centralised testing track to assess applicants for driving licenses has not been commissioned in Chennai.

Rising car ownership also has serious implications for fuel demand, pollution, and road safety. The Rocky Mountain Institute, quoted by Scientific American in a survey of energy in 2005, states that only 13 per cent of fuel energy used in a car reaches the wheels, the rest dissipating as heat and noise in the engine, the drive train, air conditioning, and idling. Moreover, 95 per cent of the accelerated mass is the car itself and only one per cent of fuel is utilised to move the driver. Few will be convinced that there is a case for facilitating the continued use of costly and polluting fossil fuels in this fashion. There is then the question of safety.

Professor Dinesh Mohan, a traffic injury prevention expert at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, told a recent seminar on Bus Rapid Transit in Chennai that a staggering 20 million to 30 million people have been killed by motor vehicles and 500 million injured; about 80,000 lives are lost on Indian roads alone each year; the majority of those killed are pedestrians, cyclists, and riders of motorised two-wheelers.

Need for policy change

The World Health Organisation thinks that without a change in policies, vehicular accidents could kill or disable more people in 2020 than HIV, tuberculosis, stroke, diarrhoeal diseases, pneumonia, emphysema/bronchitis, and war. Are governments alive to the impending danger?

Urban infrastructure is in a broken down condition. The journal Transport Policy put the issue in perspective in a 2005 paper titled "Urban transport crisis in India." John Pucher and his colleagues note that some gains have been made in reducing non-particulate emissions by changing the composition of automotive fuels, such as removing lead and lowering sulphur content, but India's cities remain seriously plagued by fundamental problems such as weak and low quality roads, unsafe driving behaviour, poor traffic signalling, signage, and law enforcement.

National policy towards cars may thus have to progressively consider curbs on inefficient use of private vehicles, of which cars are the best example. Cost-effective alternatives such as buses, urban rail and para transit modes need active consideration and support.

Though the car may appear to be more affordable now, restrictions on its use, such as congestion charging, costlier parking, ban in some pedestrian areas, and reduced right of way in favour of buses, pedestrians, and cyclists may be inevitable.

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