[sustran] A Manifesto for Sustainable Transport

Ashok Sreenivas ashok.sreenivas at gmail.com
Thu May 27 19:47:13 JST 2010


You might like this piece posted on the U-Penn site on "India in
Transition".
Disclosure: the author is a friend of mine.

http://casi.ssc.upenn.edu/iit/rajan
A Manifesto for Sustainable Transport
Sudhir Chella Rajan
05/24/2010

A specter is haunting India; a specter of clean, safe, and affordable access
to goods and services for all. Policy makers find themselves at a cusp, not
quite sure whether to follow the model of automobile-dominated urban
development that characterizes twentieth century North America, or to look
at contemporary cities in Northern Europe instead, where pedestrians,
bicyclists, and users of public transit are given far greater priority than
car drivers. The former approach, while familiar and congruent with the
popular notion that modern human progress is equivalent to increasing levels
of car ownership, is patently unsustainable. The latter, on the other hand,
seems strange and out of sync with middle class aspirations, although
evidence of its superiority in terms of economic, social, and environmental
benefits remains very compelling.

For established interests, including motor vehicle manufacturers, petrol and
diesel suppliers, road contractors, traditional transport engineers, urban
planners, and the urban elite, the favored approach is motorization,
suburbanization, and highway development – with expensive metro systems
thrown in for good measure. Yet, on the street, a movement is already
gathering steam to shift the transport paradigm from *mobility* per se to *
access* to goods and services. That, in turn, implies the continuation of
mixed land-uses but with the additional improvement of infrastructure for
walking, bicycling, and public transit – especially buses – for their
flexibility and affordability. Which argument will gain salience remains to
be seen; while recent considerations such as climate change and oil security
seem likely to tilt the balance toward improving access against personal
mobility, in the short-term, pressures to lock in commitments for
motorization continue to be very strong.

The access movement in transport is the result of an epiphany that what
people need most of all is painless access to workplaces, schools,
hospitals, grocery stores, entertainment and so on, and that personal
transport is only one among many ways to achieve this goal. With severe air
pollution, crowded streets and appalling rates of fatal and debilitating
accidents, it is no surprise that keeping jobs, goods, and services within
easy proximity is what matters most to ordinary people. Even among the
middle classes, there is widespread awareness of the unsuitability of
widespread car use in Indian contexts. Our cities have developed over
decades and centuries in such a fashion that shops, homes, and many
workplaces are still largely within walkable distances of one other, except
that walkability itself has recently come under threat by the
“automobilization” of urban space. More than half of passenger trips in most
Indian cities, including large ones like Mumbai, are for distances of less
than five kilometers, which can ideally be traversed on bicycles and on
foot, but which is now possible only at great risk of collision with faster
moving vehicles. Urbanites are frequently displaced from sidewalks and the
narrow sides of the road for cycling as a result of a frenzy of activity to
create more room for the car, or are forced to rely on buses that are
polluted, dangerous, and overcrowded.

The response to these challenges appears in many forms and across social
classes. It is evident in the protests of poor cycle rickshaw drivers in
Delhi who are seeking the right to earn livelihoods on the streets, as well
as the activism of celebrities such as the actor Salman Khan promoting “Car
Free” days in Mumbai. It appears as the recovery of road space for public
transport in the form of Bus Rapid Transit experiments in Ahmedabad, Delhi,
and Pune, with many more cities in the offing, to great effect and at
extraordinarily low costs. It can be detected in the newfound interest even
among mayors and administrators in cities such as Chennai and Pune to revive
bicycling. It is also evident in urban protests all over the country around
issues of land-use, access to water, sanitation, and habitat, where it is
clear that urban policies favoring the elites, such as road building and
slum evictions, reduces access to existing services and also shifts
resources for improving them as a result of distorted government priorities.


On the other side, lobbyists continue to peddle the notion that the
ever-increasing use of personal vehicles, and the associated “freedom” for
auto-mobility, is a basic human right, one that is only impeded by poverty.
They do not like to be reminded that Europeans – particularly the Dutch and
the Danes – are quite happy to abandon the car and find their freedom on
bicycles, on foot, and on public transport, in spite of their inclement
climate compared to most Indian cities. Most significantly, what remains
unstated is that private vehicles serve only a small fraction of the
population that do not pay the full costs of occupying the road, polluting
the air, draining precious foreign exchange by guzzling imported oil,
causing accidents, and destroying ecosystems. It is the poor who engage
sustainably with urban space and subsidize others by walking or cycling for
short trips and taking public transport to cover longer distances, and
utilizing every opportunity available to consume locally available goods and
services.

In fact, it is also increasingly clear that the transport and access
challenge affects not just the poor but most citizens, as well as
policy-makers. Indeed the solutions offered by the access movement can
address concerns as varied as asthma and other respiratory diseases,
childhood obesity, climate change, community blight, diabetes, fiscal
deficits for local and state governments, hearing loss, loss of life and
limb due to accidents, petroleum dependence, rising land prices and
transport costs, road rage, and sprawl. For instance, a recent study in the
*Lancet* co-authored by Geetam Tiwari from IIT Delhi and Stephen Woolcock
from the London School of Economics, suggests that even modest improvements
in pedestrian accessibility and the provision safe bicycling routes in Delhi
can generate significantly higher carbon reductions and greater health
benefits from cleaner air and the reduced likelihood of accidents than
technological improvements for motor vehicles. Similarly, obesity and
diabetes are on the rise in cities as a result of sedentary lifestyles, a
phenomenon that can surely be put under control if urban areas were
friendlier to walking and bicycling for children and adults.

Dense, mixed-use, walkable urban spaces are recognized the world over as the
most creative and dynamic environments. The mall-like recreations of these
spaces are already perceived as being *passé* and gaudy and a poor
substitute for the real thing. From Curitiba to Copenhagen to Istanbul, the
notion of livable streets – an old Indian concept that once characterized
cities as different as Benares and Tanjavur – is now the new mantra of smart
urban design. Policy makers may want to take note of the dark side of
developers’
interests to create gated communities in exurbs and flyovers in order to
connect them to exclusive commercial and industrial centers, so that the
wealthy never have to come into contact with the old city centers and the
poor who live in them. The scenario that would then unfold would be more
stark than that portrayed in dystopian films like *Blade Runner* or *District
9*, generating the expansion of apartheid urban spaces that are already in
existence, in which a small segment of society traverses freeways in
air-conditioned vehicles and remains completely isolated from the parallel
world of an underpaid workforce that provides them their services, who are
in turn forced to navigate large spatial distances at great difficulty and
personal risk. The choice is clear: if sustainability and the preservation
of community life are important, then the voices of the access movement must
be heeded.

*Sudhir Chella Rajan is a Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, and
the Coordinator of the Indo-German Centre for Sustainability at the Indian
Institute of Technology, Madras.*


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