Written by: Express News Service
3 min readPuneFeb 5, 2011 02:52 AM IST
First published on: Feb 5, 2011 at 02:52 AM IST
Transport expert Vinoba Sunder Singh of Urban Mass Transit Company Ltd on Friday said many cities in the country are preparing Comprehensive Mobility Plans (CMP) only to seek funds under the JNNURM and not for real development. He said increasing the number of buses of a transport utility is the simplest way to solve city’s traffic and transport problems.
Singh said this during a presentation on Urban transport in India with a focus on public transport at international conference on “Healthy Cities: Perspective of Asian Concerns” at Hotel Marriott on Friday.
“Public transport system can solve the problems of today’s cities. Even today,the car ownership in India is very low compared to some other countries. The share of public transport system is fast declining. Fleet of buses in transport utilities is on the decline as most of them are running in losses.”
He said,“Earlier,not many civic bodies used to have mobility plans of the cities prepared. However,now,since the government has made it mandatory for the cities for seeking funds,many cities are preparing these plans only for the sake of funds and not for the development.”
He said mobilising people rather than vehicles and promoting the use of non-motorised transport was the need of the hour. “Buses were still the lifeline of any city and increasing the fleet would do well.”
Shreya Gadepalli of Institute for Transport and Development Policy (ITDP) stressed the importance of walking and cycling.
“It is a myth that cycling is time consuming and inconvenient. A study was conducted in Copenhagen (Denmark) which is known as a ‘cycling city’ to know what makes people cycle. Almost 61 per cent people said they cycle because it was safe and easy. Some 19 per cent said it is healthier. Nearly 6 per cent said it is cheap,while only one per cent said they cycle to save the environment,” she said.
She said that public transport is the only solution to reduce congestion and that Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) is possible on dense narrow streets also.
There were presentations on different topics including health of culture by actor Farooq Sheikh,urban biodiversity by Erach Bharucha,citizens’ health by Rajeev Yerwadekar,green cities by M Anand,among others. The conference will conclude on Saturday.
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