Public transport among worst five
NEW DELHI: When it comes to public transport and mobility, Delhi has fared poorly on Ease of Living Index, 2020. In fact, the lack of adequate public transport options put Delhi second on a list of five worst cities.
To rank cities on mobility, one of the primary criteria for ascertaining the quality of life, three crucial indicators were assessed —availability of public transport, transport-related fatalities and road infrastructure.
The findings of the report show that Delhi was among cities that had a low availability of public transport modes per lakh population. Featuring second on a list of five worst performing cities, Delhi’s figures for the ‘availability of public transport’ was 1,688.50 per lakh population (PLP). Ahmedabad, according to the rankings, fared the worst with only 638.63 transportation modes per lakh population.
The national capital was followed by Navi Mumbai with 2,037.81 PLP, Pune with 2,585.54 PLP, and finally Bengaluru, which had 4,409.62 PLP.
The best performing city in this category was Chennai with a public transport availability rate of 92,017.96 per lakh population, followed by Visakhapatnam with 21,212.92 per lakh population
The report said, “Firstly, the public transport system is not efficient enough to support the population of respective cites.
Secondly, these cities may be ”automobile dependent” for increased mobility fostered by rapid economic growth that encourages private vehicle ownership.”
This worrying trend was also highlighted in a study released by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in December last year, which showed that the ridership in public transport modes such as buses and the Delhi Metro was witnessing a decline, while the use of private vehicles was seeing a spike.
According to latest government data, Delhi has around 11 million registered private vehicles, while Delhi has a fleet of around 6,000 public buses. This is nowhere near enough to cater to the 20 million-plus population, say transport experts. For that, the city needs around 11,000 buses, they said.
Amit Bhatt, director of integrated urban transport at World Resources Institute (India), said a major area where the city is lagging is the integration of its bus fleet with its Metro system.
“We had conducted a study, which had showed that India needs around 2.5 lakh buses. In Delhi, along with a shortage of buses, the problem is also that the bus routes are not integrated with the Metro. If that had been done, it could have provided seamless transit options to commuters,” he said.
The report also stated that transport-related fatalities were much lower in Delhi. “The incidents of transport-related fatalities were much lower in cities such as Ahmedabad (5.92), Surat (6.47) Pune (7.12), Bengaluru (7.32), Delhi (12.43) and Hyderabad (12.98) per lakh population,” the report read.