Geetam Tiwari's White Paper

All the 2006 Principal Voices are submitting a White Paper to the Web site, explaining their views at length.

Geetam Tiwari, associate professor of transport planning at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, argues that while India's poor are vital to the urban economy they are too often forgotten when it comes to transportation.

India's urbanization process has been slow but it now has one of the largest urban systems in the world. The country is home to 35 cities with populations of more than one million and nearly 40% of its urban population resides in these cities.

Those that migrate to urban areas tend to move in search of employment opportunities rather than because of the amenities available. A large number of India's urban residents are employed in the informal sector, dependent on non-motorized transport and living in self-constructed housing units with minimal facilities.

This sector continues to be viewed as unwanted, and formal housing and transport plans do not make provisions for its needs. Despite this, however, the formal sector continues to require the support of the unskilled labor provided by migrants from rural areas.

India's large cities -- one million plus population -- are, in a sense, agglomerations of several small cities with different economies in close proximity. One economy serves the needs of the affluent and features modern technologies, formal markets and the outward appearance of developed countries. The other serves both sectors and is marked by traditional technologies, informal markets and economic deprivation.

The transportation choices and requirements of these two sectors differ significantly. It is therefore important for urban travel demand to be understood in the context of differentiated urban growth.

In most Indian cities, the same road space is used by modern cars, buses, three-wheelers, scooters and motorcycles, bicycles, rickshaws and animal- and human-driven carts. There exists a dependence on walking and cycling trips, despite the absence of an infrastructure for them, that clearly demonstrates the presence of captive users of these means of transport.

While the share of motorized trips does increase with city size, low-cost modes such as walking, non-motorized rickshaws and cycles continue to play an important role in transportation.

The share of walking trips ranges from 37% in a city of 100,000 population to 28% in megacities with a population of 10 million. This pattern is not expected to change significantly in the near future.

Despite a high share of walking trips and trips by non-motorized means, transport infrastructure investment continues to ignore inclusion of facilities for these modes, while public-transport discussions center largely on capital-intensive systems like the metro.

The argument given for introducing metro systems is that they serve the high-density demands of the city's corridors. Indian cities have high-density developments in the form of urban slums, but even a subsidized metro system is too expensive for slum dwellers. Any rail-based system requires a high-density population living along the corridor who can afford the price of that system. This is not the case in most Indian cities.

Current urbanization patterns present a unique opportunity to build an inclusive city that caters to all segments of society. The challenge is to move away from policies and development plans which ignore the existence of the informal sector in housing, transport and livelihood opportunities.

What do you think?

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Your article is intellectually stimulating. My suggestion to the planners and decision makers is to search for solutions that involve less foreign exchange payments and implement cheaper and effective transport systems like using cable cars and buses and trains.

People standing on the polluted road is a punishment after working in the office, and they should be transported effectively in buses and trains etc, without chairs ie standing only, as in that way many people can be moved faster without many problems.

I feel that reduces so much of time, energy, and money for government and private sector and passengers. This can lead to optimized usage of scarce available resources to improve competitiveness of overall economy.

Those traveling in such transport facilities feel happy and contented as they reach their destinations without wasting time and energy on the road and can participate in domestic and other fields effectively.

You are absolutely right. We have to think of changing the present economic model, which is driven by technology. Urban biodiversity and landscapes will play bigger role in redesigning cities. I hope we can mobilize mass movements for just and equitable spaces for masses.

First priority is obviously for BRT (bus rapid transit). It is significant that after lots of pulls and pushes, Pune has firmed up on this.

The government of India and my home country, Nigeria, should realize the key role transportation play in accelerating the economy of nations across globe by allocating a huge portion of the annual budget to transportation sector, as this would affect the entire economy positively.

Nice paper by Professor Tiwari and I support the cause of making public transport viable and available across all sections of our society. But the paper says 'in most cities in India the road space is also used by animals'. I totally disagree by this sentence, especially when you are using the word 'most.'

A few days back I was watching a Hollywood movie and the director had covered only a few grimy places in India, which made others conclude: 'Wow, is this what India is like?' More and more such conclusions are drawn if we ourselves use such words and present such image of our country globally.

Coming back to the point, I agree our transportation mode on roads needs segregation. One of the classic examples within Asia is Malaysia. In Malaysia they have not only segregated transportation modes on roads but also displayed speed limits across modes at every few meters. This has reduced accidents to quite an extent.

I support Professor Tiwari on the statement that people migrate to urban areas for work. Most of the informal settlements in Ahmedabad travel to workplaces on cycles. They would love to get access to subsidized mode of public transport but it's a real challenge for the state government on how they can maintain good services at such low fares.

Mumbai is another good example for the best public transportation it has!! But this suits its linear structure, wherein people are really staying far from their workplaces. In case of Ahmedabad, because of its circular structure, most of the workplaces are within reach and people prefer cycles.

While I agree that planners should take into account the portion of the population that can't afford capital-intensive forms of transportation, I think the source of the disparity of incomes is the foundation that needs to be addressed.

Having lived in Maracaibo, Venezuela the past 18 months, I have seen, first hand, the rich becoming richer, at the expense of the working poor. I am not a socialist by any means, and believe that capitalism and jobs is the cure for poverty. But the business owners here are accumulating obscene amounts of wealth, and paying the common workers a criminally low wage.

Prices for goods are at least as expensive as in the U.S. (and more often than not, more expensive) while the labor costs are a fraction of US costs. Capital investments such as metros and wide, multi-laned highways would be effective at relieving urban transportation crowding if people were paid livable wages and could afford higher priced forms of transportation along with other basics like homes with running water and sanitation.

Industry and jobs generate tax revenue which can generate infrastructure (if it's not pilfered by government officials).

Accommodating the walkers, bike-riders, rickshaws and human-powered carts only treats the symptoms, not the cause, of the problems. It also consumes urban land that could otherwise be used for mainstream economic development. Reducing "off-the-grid" economic exchange will only happen when jobs are created and workers paid a fair, livable wage.

I believe in all you have said. Governments in both India and Nigeria are failing to understand the importance of putting resources into the transportation sector of the economy, and this is a shame on the ruling class.

Send your ideas to the Mayor of Madrid, please -- he hasn´t walked in the city for at least a decade.

The metro is great, the public bus service is excellent, but the sidewalks are full of obstacles from signs to parked cars and motorcycles - yes, on the sidewalk!

Cities should be pedestrian and cycle friendly. Maybe then less cars would be on the streets and the people would be walking or using public transport. Then we might have a mobility friendly city!

Excellent idea!

I like your page, it is very important, the transportation in your city. I would like to know your country.

I think it is important for the people of India to rely on other forms of resources that are readily available in that region of the world.

They must rely own their own supply and technology, mainly water supply and harness that resource and find ideas on how that resource can fuel the country.

I think water can contribute and have a great effect on land restoration, especially in harsh and dry areas of India. I think water is the key to producing energy in all forms and not relying so much on oil, human activity, etc.

While we NGOS hotly debate for or against one system of public transport versus another, the growth and use of personal auto vehicles continues to explode.

There's an urgent need to mobilize the majority who WALK or CYCLE and use buses, however poor their performance, so that politicians and bureaucrats working overtime to erect expensive infrastructure (more and more roads and flyovers) primarily for personal benefit are forced to look at the cheaper but far more urgent options for the benefit of pedestrians, cyclists and bus users.

One answer is smaller but more frequent buses on routes that are more well used.

In Pune, the buses do not take into consideration the needs of travellers. The fact is that most people are moving between residences to places of work/shopping/study etc.

Therefore when no direct buses are available, even over short distances, people feel it is easier to have their own transport despite the high cost. This has resulted in proliferation of two wheelers.

If shuttle buses are introduced between places of high density travel (after undertaking a suitable study) it would be possible to reduce the number of vehicles, two or three wheelers as well as cars.

Many students drive two wheelers because of the absence of properly connected bus routes. This is often a reason for dropouts among female students where the school/college is too far.

This paper is very well articulated. The CNN presentation was educative. Thanks for making it available, I enjoyed it.

Urban planning and design should place emphasis on how to reduce the need for work-oriented movement by the poor by locating low-cost residential quarters affordable to the poor near where the poor predominantly earn a living in cities.

As we assert that we are now in a global village with converging interests of the developed economies and the lesser developed ones, a global think tank on the transportation problems of the LDC's should be inaugurated by the UN.

World Bank sponsored loans should be given to companies who will facilitate the provision of modern rail networks within the cluster of mega and micro cities in some of the LDCs.

Note this initiative should not be implemented by the governments of the hosting countries, as lack of experience and financial mismanagement will not let the projects see the light of day.

We all need to give serious thought to what Professor Tiwari has written. We should not just be fascinated by fast cars or a metro, but make sure the needs of economically weaker sections of the population are also catered by our transportation systems.

The fact is there are many thousands of people in Delhi who cannot even afford a bus to go to work, let alone of metro.

I agree with Geetam Tiwari's views that the metro may be unaffordable for slum dwellers, but I feel that because of the vast population influx in the city we need a metro, along with bike paths, walking paths and a bus system.

One thing should not be stopped because of another, since we need to address problems of all class of residents. The metro will, I think, give us more space on the congested roads of today for walking and biking.

My comment is on the article by Geetam Tiwari. Agreed, urban mass transport has to be affordable, but even if the very poor in India's major cities cannot afford mass transport such as the metro system or other such mass systems, the middle classes can.

If even this segment of the population stops using cars it will free up space for the large number of bicycles, bikes and non-motorized transport that is still widely used.

In Bombay, the city where I grew up, the rail and bus system was dirty and overcrowded, but cheap and very effective for moving large numbers of people.

It was, and is, used extensively by everyone except the rich (it has a two-tier tariff structure).

Such systems need to be strengthened and encouraged and not allowed to deteriorate. In Pune, the only public transport is buses but the civic authorities are downgrading the system instead of pouring resources into it.