Traffic crawling 50%-60% slower in city

In the absence of a cap on the number of cars households can own, the vehicular boom in Delhi is making you stay longer on roads.

A study conducted on 13 arterial roads in the Capital by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has found that vehicles on these stretches are plying 50%-60% slower than the speed these roads were built for.

The 13 arterial roads that were part of the study included heavily congested ones such as Outer Ring Road; Swaroop Nagar to Wazirabad, Mahatma Gandhi Road (Ring Road); Indira Gandhi Stadium Complex to Majnu Ka Tilla and Sri Aurobindo Marg; Lado Sarai to Kidwai Nagar West. Arterial roads are primary networks that provide long-distance travel through multi-modal transport system connecting all major city-level land uses. They also facilitate inter-city and regional trips by connecting with highways and expressway networks.

The analysis was done on the basis of data taken from Google Maps that was noted for every hour from 8 am to 8 pm in June.

The study found that all the 13 selected arterial roads had an average peak speed of 26 km/hr, while the off-peak speed was recorded at 27 km/hr, which is 50%-60% lower than the design speed. These roads have been designed to achieve a driving speed of 50-70 km/hr as per the Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure (Planning & Engineering) Centre (UTTIPEC) street design guidelines as well as Indian Road Congress guidelines for urban roads. The regulated speed is 40-55 km/hour.

It was also seen that during the 12 hours of the day, around 75% of the time, the average speed is 25-30 km/hr. About 17% of the time, it is 20-25 km/hr and only 8% of the day’s time was the speed more than 30 km/hr.

As per a 2010 report by RITES, the average peak speed in Delhi was 27.7 km/hr and off-peak was 30.8 km/hr — now, this has come down to 26 km/hr and 28 km/hr.

The analysis breaks the myth that roads have less traffic during weekends. The analysis says the average peak speed noted on weekends on these roads is 25 km/hr which is lower than the weekday speed of 26 km/hr.

“This drops to 8 km/hr on Sri Aurobindo Marg and 9 km/hr on Mehrauli-Badarpur road in peak hours. Evening peaks are worse on weekends — 21-23 km/hr in contrast to 25-27 km/hr on weekdays,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director-research and advocacy, CSE.

While the average traffic speed on Saturday is 21 km/hour, on Sunday it improves slightly to 23 km/hour but remains still worse than weekdays, she added. The study states that the average traffic speed in Lutyen’s Zone, which has primary arterial roads with widths up to 50 meters, is considerably higher.

The average peak hour speed is 44 km/hr — almost 40% higher than on other arterial roads. The average off-peak speed is 52 km/ hr, which is almost double that on other arterials. There is also a considerable difference between the average peak and off-peak speed. CSE also analysed hourly air quality data for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) — largely influenced by traffic — for a selected day. It found that when the average morning peak speed of 28 km/hr drops to 25 km/hr in the evening, NO2 levels increase from 68 microgramme/cubic metre to 94 microgramme/cubic metre — an increase of 38%.

“This can get worse during winter when inversion builds up during evening,” Roychowdhury said.