12 Transit and the shape of Indian cities

Ashima Sood

Introduction

Buses and bus rapid transport system (BRTS), the latest cars and Uber taxis, two-wheelers and motorbikes, auto-rickshaws and four-wheelers, metro rail and surface rail, cycle-rickshaws and cycles and even the occasional tractor or tonga: these are only some of the bewildering variety of transportation modes to be seen on city roads in India.

India’s urban transport system is as problem-ridden as it is diverse: poor quality and congested roads combined by fast-growing automobile populations, weak traffic control and high rates of accident mortality, especially for pedestrians, inadequate public transport systems and the unacceptably high levels of noise, air pollution and environmental consequences associated with Indian roads (Pucher et al 2005). Anyone who has been stuck in a traffic jam would concur with this diagnosis of the ills of Indian cities. Yet what explains the inability of urban planners to anticipate and provide for the transit needs of city residents? What social, economic and political factors underpin these poor outcomes of transport planning processes?

In a previous module, we have discussed mobility in the context of migration and livelihood decisions. In this module, we discuss mobility in relation to “short-term decisions of travel choices” (Joshi 2014:10), and the ways in which these are moulded by the transit infrastructures, networks and modes of planning.

Transport planning and studies is now a large and burgeoning field. This module aims to offer a sociological lens on the role of transport in urban processes. Researchers agree that transportation systems and the spatial patterns of cities are closely correlated. Transport planning is thus not simply a matter of moving citizens from one point to another in the most efficient way but also of integrating land use in a manner that minimizes transit costs.

Urban transport in Indian cities is characterized first, by the priority it places on privatised and motorised transit. As this module shows, the dominance of private vehicles is not really a matter of numbers: cars and two-wheelers comprise a relatively small share of total trips made in Indian cities. Instead, as many studies have shown, the “car credo” (Economic and Political Weekly 2015) or the ascendancy of the automobile is a result of a policy bias. Although national transport policies have taken a more holistic view, at the local level, new transport infrastructure construction invariably favours roadways to ease traffic flows over other kinds of transport investment.

Second, the political economy of transport policy has favoured large scale transport infrastructure projects over low-cost and incremental improvements in transit systems. Third, despite the fact that a non-motorised transit, such as bicycles or cycle-rickshaws and intermediate transit carry a significant share of all city trips, these modes have been heavily regulated and even restricted on the grounds that they cause “congestion”.

This module is organized as follows: the first section establishes the link between location and trips, ie, land use and transit and examines the ways in which this connection has fashioned Indian cities. The second section places the rise of motorisation against the backdrop of recent data on the shares of different transit modes in total trips. The following section explores the contestations that have emerged over alternative public transport infrastructures, with a comparison between the debates around the metro rail transit and bus rapid transport (BRT) systems, as well as issues surrounding non-motorised and intermediate forms of transport.

Land use and transport: how transit shapes the city

Policymakers’ interest in transport infrastructures stems from their well-established primacy in creating and sustaining agglomeration economies and helping expand market size. In this perspective, “Transportation is an input to all urban activities” (Mohanty 2014:88).

“Transport and land use have symbiotic relationships” (Mohanty 2014:89). The key implication of this acknowledgment is the co-determination of “trip and location decisions” as part of the “land use-transport feedback cycle” (Mohanty 2014:89). This feedback cycle rests on the spatial separation between land uses in a region – for example, some areas have a clustering of residences, which may be separate from the shopping areas, educational and institutional areas, commercial districts, state and government offices and so on. These geographic distances necessitate trips that use the transport system, whether through walking, driving or taking a bus.

While this part of the feedback cycle is amply intuitive, planners further also recognize that transport infrastructure is not evenly distributed – some areas are better connected through vehicular or railway networks than others, and moreover, transport linkages along certain routes are stronger than on other routes. The fact that not all localities within the city can access other locations with equal ease has profound implications for land use (Mohanty 2014). For example, if residents slums or bastis on a city’s peripheries face a paucity of affordable transport options to travel to the city centre for work, either jobs will have to be generated in the vicinity of the slum area or residential possibilities for low income citizens will have to be created closer to the location of jobs. As Mohanty (2014) argues, these connections help to make a strong case for integrated transport-land use planning, and more, to the idea of “transit-oriented development”. For our purposes, it is important to ask: how do these logics unfold in the Indian city?

In a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly’s Review of Urban Affairs, Dinesh Mohan provided a broad brush sketch of the evolution of the typical Indian city and its effects on transport network demand (2013). Unlike European cities, which have a single business district on which all traffic converges, Indian cities have grown to encompass multiple business districts. This was partly the consequence of colonial planning practices, which situated the European quarters – civil lines, cantonments, government buildings – at a distance from the existing “native” city. This separation introduced a fundamental divergence in the trajectories of the European and the Indian city, with stark socio-spatial segmentation in basic services and municipal investment in favour of the former (See also Peace 2006; Module 3.6).

Post-Independence, these patterns continued to persist even after Indian elites came to occupy the British city (Dupont 2004; see Module 3.6). The post-colonial city thus grew outside the boundaries of both “native” and British cities. In the new millennium, these trends have been accentuated by the increasing self-segregation of the middle classes and elites in gated communities on the peri-urban frontier (Kennedy and Sood 2016).

The transport networks resulting from these spatial configurations have been wrought by two paradoxical forces. On the one hand, the urban form has encouraged sprawl and densely inhabited mixed use development around multiple nuclei. This favours low income and low skill residents who need not travel far to find work. On the other hand, the spatially concentrated nature of demand for skilled workers has created a constituency for long distance travel in the city, one that is exacerbated by the rise of peri-urban gated communities. As an example, consider the Mumbai financial district which is located in the south of the city, even though its professional workforce may commute from areas to the north or east like Navi Mumbai or Powai.The demand for such long distance modes of transport is further buttressed by the resettlement of slum residents from the city centre on urban peripheries.

This then is the backdrop against which urban transport networks are planned and implemented. As we show below, the default mode in the Indian city has favoured increasing motorisation, with its paraphernalia of highways, expressways and flyovers and in recent times, pedestrian overpaths or “skywalks”.

In contrast to such privatised transport networks, public transport systems like metro rail or bus rapid transport offer a different array of pluses and minuses. Beyond the choice of private or public transport solutions, however, lies the deeper question of the “urban accessibility pathway” made possible by the spatial structure or actively sought by long range integrated transport planning. Rode et al (2014) define such pathways by “the degree to which accessibility is based on the physical proximity between origins and destinations or on transport solutions which can overcome spatial separation, and the degree to which these solutions involve private or public motorised transport” (p 5).

Transit in the Indian City

Urban accessibility pathways ideally incorporate both land use and transport infrastructure planning. Mohan (2013) laments the inadequacy of the evidentiary database in India, which limits informed policy choices. The next section presents the available data on transit metrics in Indian cities and outlines why increasing motorisation is problematic in the context of Indian cities.

Trips and Modes in Indian City

Citing 2012 data from the Delhi Planning Department, Mohan (2013) argues that the numbers of 4.34 million motorised two wheelers (MTVs) and 2.17 million cars in Delhi were likely to be grossly exaggerated. This author estimates more realistic figures at 1.28 million for cars and 1.95 million for MTVs.

If these numbers seem small in a city of almost 17 million (2011 Census data), Mohan’s estimates of the share of cars and MTVs in total trips undertaken in 10 Indian cities are even more telling.1 The highest percentage of trips by car is undertaken in Delhi at 18%, with cities such as Jaipur, Hyderabad and Bangalore at 10-11%. In the remaining six cities, according to these estimates, trips by car account for less than a tenth of all trips made. In contrast, MTVs account for a high of 28% of trips made in Madurai, and over 20% in Bhopal, Kanpur and Jaipur. Their share ranges between 10-20% in all other cities except Mumbai, where it is a measly 4% of trips. According to Mohan, his data underestimates the contribution of public transport. Despite considerable variations between the cities for which Mohan provides computations, some remarkable trends become apparent. Privatised motorised transport, including cars and MTVs, comprises about a third or less of all trips made in Indian cities. In Mumbai, it accounts for less than 10% of all trips made. Given the relatively faint quantitative footprint of privatised and motorised transport in Indian cities, what explains its outsize political influence in directing the policy agenda?

Motorisation

Joshi (2014) argues that motorisation must be understood beyond mere numbers or growth in car ownership. It is instead a process that “facilitates the emergence of socio-political constituencies that demand wider roads, cheaper fuels and free parking lots” (p 17). The rise of this automobile lobby has accompanied and reflected the emergence of a powerful middle class, with disposable incomes and consumerist aspirations, which valorizes the promise of personal mobility afforded by the car (See Module 6.4).

However, this lobby is strengthened in the neoliberal era by encouragement to the automobile industry. Industry interests also attempt to influence urban planning and implementation in ways that benefits growth in private car ownership.

1 The more widely cited Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) commissioned estimates are not reported here given Mohan’s critique.

The impacts of motorisation go beyond these direct effects. They are also reflected in the skewing of planning priorities in favour of automobiles and against public and non-motorised transport. Cities such as Hyderabad have over the years developed road networks that largely lack footpaths (Ramachandraiah 2007). In Mumbai, uncontrolled motorisation and attendant road congestion has produced a path dependent lurch towards large-scale transport infrastructure projects – “metro-rail projects, the opening of the Bandra–Worli Sealink in 2009, and plans for more roads, metro-lines, mono-rails, skywalks and sealinks” (Harris 2013). In other words, despite the low contribution of privatised and motorised transport to overall travel in the city, new transport infrastructure development in Mumbai has overwhelmingly favoured motorisation.

Nation-wide, an avowed commitment to “sustainable transport” became a centrepiece of the national urban transport policy (NUTP) in 2006. However, the transition from ‘roads for vehicles’ to ‘streets for people’ has failed to translate into “transport sector investment priorities” (Joshi 2014, p 19). For example, according to an analysis by the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS), 57% of transport funding under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) went to roads and flyovers, and only a third went to mass rapid transit (Joshi 2014, p 19-20). Motorisation continues to dominate the imagination of urban transport planners. Anand (2006, p 3425) succinctly sums up the political economy of transport planning when he states that, “administrators and elected political representatives make transportation policy for the city as they see it through the windscreens of their air-conditioned cars”.

Drawing on the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty, Joshi (2014) highlights how the “road” as a channel for traffic disrupts existing urbanisms that develop around streets. Quite unlike the standardized flow of Western traffic, “Indian traffic is heterogeneous and diverse, moving at different speeds, manoeuvring for space”. Thus, non-transport uses and certainly non-motorised transport have been an integral part of the Indian street.

Yet present-day configurations of road space, with their bias towards motorised traffic, not only impose a certain spatial discipline, they also serve to exclude some types of users. In a study of post-liberalization Mumbai at the turn of the millennium, Anand (2006) describes some of the mechanisms through which such exclusion is made possible. One such mechanism was pedestrian fencing, which closed off traffic medians and footpaths to pedestrian traffic. Instead, pedestrians in Mumbai, as in other Indian metropolises, were required to traverse long distances for pedestrian subways. Moreover, these “world-class” roads often removed street vendors and “pavement dwellers.” The daytime entry of trucks, unlicensed buses and autorickshaws was barred; a patchwork of street restrictions impeded handcarts and bicycles.

The sections below trace out how motorisation limits the horizon of transportation possibilities in the Indian city. Some of its most serious repercussions however fall on the most vulnerable users of roads in India: non-motorised transport users and especially pedestrians (Badami 2005). Pedestrians and cycle rickshaw drivers account for disproportionately high numbers of road fatalities (Badami 2005; Sundar and Ghate 2013). They are also susceptible to the hazardous air quality on Indian roads. AS Badami puts it (2009, p 44):

the pedestrian environment in Indian cities is so severely vitiated, that walking, the most natural of human activities, has become an extremely unpleasant, if not a hazardous activity. Indeed, it may be said that in a nation of pedestrians, the pedestrian has been rendered a third class citizen.

Public Transport

From the trams of Kolkata, to the local railway lines of Mumbai – public transport in Indian cities has a long and storied history. Mohan (2013) estimates that in the bigger metropolises, public transport accounts for over 15% of total trips. Although the share of the Mumbai rail system is not provided by Mohan, as many as 22% of all trips in Mumbai were undertaken by public transport (p 43). Another figure, provided by the Indian Railways in 2011, tells us that “in the three megacities of Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai, and on the ring rail in New Delhi, surface rail carried 4.06 billion passengers – a daily average of 11.1 million passengers” (Manchala and Vagvala 2014, p 106). Manchala and Vagvala (2014) make a case for expanding surface rail systems. In the case of Mumbai, for example, they point out that it is possible to extend the number of coaches in surface rail far more easily than for metro rail, and this number has even been  increased from nine to over 15 coaches in Mumbai suburban rail. However, the suburban rail traffic also requires construction of new lines and these represent a new expense (Manchala and Vagvala 2014).

This is where the policy debate has largely focused on systems such as metro and bus rapid transit.

Metro Rail: Struggles for space?

As much as the predominance of privatised motorised transport, the choice between alternative public transport modalities has also signalled contestation over urban space in Indian cities. While metro rail megaprojects are increasingly popular in India, a dispassionate tabulation of their pros and cons as well as their actual implementation on the ground raises serious doubts about their suitability in Indian conditions.

Surveying the international literature on the experiences of metro systems, Mohan (2008, p 51) argues that in cities lacking concentrated business districts, metro systems have failed to achieve passenger volumes large enough to justify the huge outlays they entail. In fast-growing Indian cities with multiple business districts, fixed line high capacity rail systems do not generate adequate passenger demand, and moreover compete with extremely low cost options such as motorised two wheelers.

Commentators on metro rail projects around the country have come to similar conclusions. In a careful examination of the detailed project report (DPR) for Pune metro, based on parameters such as projected time and fuel savings, as well as the larger governance structure for the project, Sreenivas (2011, p31) concluded that “This fascination for large projects leads to total neglect of other smaller, cheaper, easier to implement and often more critical modes of transport such as walking, cycling and bus systems.” What is remarkable here is that even far less populous cities such as Kochi, Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Thiruvananthapuram are considering metro rail development, though they lie far below the three million population threshold for consideration of a metro rail public transport system recommended by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD). Siemiatycki’s (2006) study of the Delhi metro as an infrastructure mega project, showed that although the idea of a metro system for Delhi could be traced back to the late 1960s, “selling” it to the public when construction began in the late 1990s involved an invocation both of tangible benefits and “world-class” image building. The question arises: why does policy focus on metro network development when expert consensus and implementation experience both question its benefits? The answer to this question brings to the fore issues surrounding the political economy of transport infrastructure development in Indian cities.

In the case of the Delhi Metro Railway Corporation (DMRC), Siemiatycki (2006) argued that the public sector ownership helped avoid any allegations of corruption. However, as in other mass transit projects around the world, coalitions of “politicians, property owners, planners, business groups and others” were successful in shaping decision-making – on selection of consultants and contractors, among other matters — in a fashion that prioritized group interests and built political capital (p 289). The DMRC also became a major player in the real estate market – both as a property developer in its own right, as well as through its effects on pricing in local property markets. As Bon (2016, p 187) states in the examination of one such business park development project around Shastri Park station: “the metro rail project enables a parastatal agency under the central government in charge of transport to exercise rights as land developer within a defined perimeter in Delhi.”

Indeed, “land value capture” through an increase in land prices induced by regulatory changes remains the method of choice for public financing metro rail systems, according to the World Bank (Suzuki et al 2015, p 177). However, its repercussions were not always benign. In Delhi, the metro fundamentally transformed the urban fabric of the neighbourhoods through which it ran. In poorer localities and slums, land appropriations and displacements destroyed existing communities to make way for new high end retail complexes. Elsewhere, for instance, in the case of Shastri Park, Bon (2015) demonstrates how local residents in surrounding bastis have been kept outside planning and implementation circuits. Though the development has brought both pros and cons for these low income unauthorized colonies, the channels of decision- making and information remain narrow and continue to exclude the vast majority of these groups.

In Hyderabad, the construction of an elevated metro system through a public private partnership (PPP) with Maytas — an infrastructure group promoted by Information Technology (IT) services firm Satyam — was prioritised over additions to the existing rail network, as well as a proposal to build a new BRT system (Ramachandraiah 2007). Amid the eventual collapse of the original private partner, the city became the site of a particularly spirited debate around the monetary and non-monetised costs of the project. At stake were the projected effects on heritage buildings by the operation of an elevated metro system, as well as the environmental and noise impacts, especially at multiple points where the routes steered close to schools, colleges and hospitals. In the very heart of the controversy was the issue of the real estate which accrued to the private partner as part of the PPP, because expansion of routes was partially made possible by the acquisition or monetisation of surrounding lands (Ramachandraiah 2009). Indeed the Hyderabad case led some activists and researchers to contend that that the meme of “world-class” transport that pervaded the policy discourse on the metro system was closely linked with inequitable real estate development; these underlying dynamics propelled its popularity among policy makers (Ramachandraiah 2009).

Bus rapid transport

Relative to metro rail systems, bus rapid transport systems offer many gains on economic, efficiency, accessibility, security and environmental fronts (Mohan 2008). For every kilometre of construction, elevated metro systems cost Rs 1500 million, and underground metro rail costs Rs 2,000-2,500 million. For that length, the cost of the BRT is only Rs 50-100 million, orders of magnitude smaller. BRT systems are also less disruptive of existing spatial patterns, and in fact serve spur the local retail economy (Mohan 2008). Most importantly, they are better suited to the “poly-nucleated city structure, existing comprehensive road network and socio-economic diversity of users” that characterize Indian metropolises, and provide low cost flexibility in response to “changing demand in quantity, quality and location of services” (Rizvi 2014, p 90).Despite the pros, however, BRTS has not enjoyed the policy popularity of metro rail systems. What explains this rather puzzling gap?

Delhi’s experience offers some clues. In spite of a long period of planning and gestation, the BRTS had a rocky trajectory in Delhi, an early innovator in public transport. Almost from its very start, a 5.6 kilometre stretch of BRT corridor in South Delhi – consisting of two central lanes reserved for bus operations as well as pedestrian and bike lanes and bus stops (Tiwari 2016) – was besieged by a powerful car lobby and its media allies. This was despite the overwhelming 80% and more of surveyed bus commuters and cyclists who were satisfied with the corridor and supported its extension (Tiwari 2016; Rizvi 2014). In 2012, in response to a public interest litigation (PIL), the corridor was shut down for several months and finally reopened after the High Court of Delhi reiterated the positive benefit-cost ratio of the BRTS. Nonetheless, the newly inaugurated government of the Aam Aadmi Party decided in 2015 to scrap the corridor.

Comparing bus rapid transport systems in Delhi and Ahmedabad, Rizvi (2014) argues that the success of the Ahmedabad system and the failure of Delhi reflected different levels of political backing. Tiwari (2016) hints at the larger political economy of urban transport in India when she suggests that the public transport agenda finds policy support only to the extent that it does not inconvenience car owners.

Intermediate Public Transport

Gadepalli (2016) outlines the role of “local and informal transport services like shared autorickshaws, maxi cabs, mini buses” as modes of “ intermediate public transport (IPT) system providing high frequency shuttle services on a few high-demand corridors” ( p 46). These modes are especially important in smaller cities of under one million where they comprise 13% of all trips. However these modes have also become part of a dualized public transport system, with the IPT operating outside “formal transit policy and planning processes” (p 47). While city buses often see autorickshaws and other IPT as competition, the two modes of transport in fact play very different roles within the urban transport ecosystem. For example, autorickshaws and four wheelers are far more demand responsive than regularly scheduled city corporation buses, and more efficient in point to point connectivity.

An efficient and well-integrated urban transport regime must include such IPT (Gadepalli 2016). Nonetheless, auto-rickshaws and more recently battery rickshaws continue to be seen as traffic hazards and subjected to high regulatory burdens (Mohan and Roy 2003; Harding and Rojesh 2014).

Focusing on the cycle-rickshaw in Kolkata and Delhi, respectively, Samanta (2012) and Baviskar (2011) argue that contemporary imaginaries of the world-class city show little interest in accommodating such non-motorised forms of transport on the road. Sood (2012) extends this logic further to show how the regulatory framework at the level of the municipal government in Delhi discourages informal transit services providers such as cycle rickshaw drivers through harassment and punitive fines imposed by policy and municipal authorities. Such malign neglect imperils the contributions of a key form of paratransit (Sood 2012; Ravi 2016), especially one that has filled in the gap in last mile connectivity – from public transport hub or metro station to doorstep of home – vis-à-vis the Delhi metro (Kurosaki 2012). More importantly, it also damages the livelihood of a predominantly migrant, unskilled and highly vulnerable workforce (Sood 2012; Ravi 2016; Kishwar 2006).

In Brief

Tracing the implementation of the National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP), Kharola (2013) points out that its vision of integrated land use and transport planning with a priority given to public transport is far from being materialised on Indian roads. In Indian cities, transport infrastructures have on the one hand become a critical component of city-centric economic growth strategies (Joshi 2014; Ramachandraiah 2009; Bon and Kennedy 2014). On the other hand, transport infrastructure development often favours motorized transport dependence.

This module has attempted to trace out the repercussions of such automobile dependence in Indian cities and situate it within a larger political economy of transport policy in India. Even though para-transit and non-motorised transport find explicit recognition in national policies such as the National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP), at the local level, the design and implementation of transport regulations continue to be swayed by the powerful automobile lobby. Moreover, even the choice of public transport projects reveals a clear bias in favour of large-scale projects that allow land value capture, often for elite groups. This module has focused largely on the social science scholarship, and the issues of equity and efficiency that figure in this literature. Nonetheless, the body of knowledge on sustainable urban transport design continues to expand. Over time, we may begin to see that lessons of this knowledge base being manifested not only in national policy but also local traffic regulations and choice of investments. That is certainly the hope.

Weblinks

In India, many groups are working on sustainable urban policy, from policy and advocacy

perspectives. To learn more, see the website of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Network

(SUM Net):

http://www.sumnet.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=133

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