[sustran] Climate plan wants drastic curbs on private cars

[Sujit Patwardhan]

This should be of interest.
--
Sujit



Times of India, Pune
December 15, 2008

*Climate plan wants drastic curbs on private cars*
15 Dec 2008, 0006 hrs IST, Nitin Sethi & Mahendra Kumar Singh, TNN


   NEW DELHI: Owning and using private vehicles could become a lot tougher
if proposals made by the National Action Plan on Climate Change are
implemented.

Alarmed by the burgeoning growth of private vehicles in Indian cities and
the resultant rise in fuel emissions, a panel under the action plan has
suggested a slew of measures that promise to change the face of urban
transport.

At the heart of these recommendations is the understanding that all-round
costs of using personal vehicles need to be raised even as public transport
is strengthened.

The measures - proposed by the Mission on Sustainable Habitat under the
action plan being prepared by the urban development ministry -include making
ownership of parking space compulsory for those wishing to buy new private
vehicles, making parking fee reflect the cost of land, imposing a congestion
charge and making parts of the city off limits for cars.

The mission document is being prepared to detail what the PM's council on
climate change had passed in principle a few months ago. The report notes
that growth of registered vehicles is four times the rate of growth of
population in six major metros - Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad,
Mumbai and Chennai.

Simultaneously the share of public transport has declined from 69% to 38% in
the 1994-2007 period in cities with population above 4 million.

It warns that the fuel consumption for road vehicles, if unchecked, would be
six times the 2005 level by 2035 and greenhouse gas emissions would go up
5.8 times in the 30-year period.

The mission has recommended dedicating select corridors to only public
transport, limiting the availability of parking space in city centres,
banning parking on arterial roads, charging higher parking rates at peak
hours, make street parking steep and reducing the use of diesel propelled
private vehicles besides other measures.

While this may seem like a wish list many experts have recommended before,
as part of the climate change action plan, many of these ideas have a good
chance of getting implemented for the first time. The mission document is to
be shared with the PM's climate change council before it gets operational.

"The Centre provides funds for urban development. We would build these into
the city and municipal plans that we fund in consultation with states and
the respective cities," said a senior official in the urban development
ministry, explaining how the recommendations would be turned into
regulations.

The mission document also recommends creation of a regulatory body which
will lay down minimum basic service standards for the industry, impose heavy
fines, suspend or even cancel licenses and prosecute the erring agencies or
individuals.

There's also a proposal for a dedicated urban transport fund to pump money
into running public transport better in urban areas.

Endorsing the moves by the power ministry, it has also backed the imposition
of tough fuel efficiency norms for vehicles and gone further to recommend
that government's purchase of vehicles should be done keeping fuel
efficiency in mind.

To back innovation and improvement in technology the mission has asked for
fiscal incentives linked to fuel economy of the vehicles.


-- 
------------------------------------------------------
Sujit Patwardhan
sujitjp at gmail.com

"Yamuna",
ICS Colony,
Ganeshkhind Road,
Pune 411 007
India
Tel: +91 20 25537955
Cell: +91 98220 26627
-----------------------------------------------------
Hon. Secretary:
Parisar
www.parisar.org
------------------------------------------------------
Founder Member:
PTTF
(Pune Traffic & Transportation Forum)
www.pttf.net
------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.jca.apc.org/public/sustran-discuss/attachments/20081216/d3a3f0ab/attachment.html