Urban traffic congestion is one of the major policy headaches of the city administration. Apart from loss of time and economic output, congested urban traffic is a primary contributor to poor air quality and high levels of respiratory diseases.
Recently, a news item highlighted that feeder bus operators for the Delhi Metro were agitated about ?illegal? operations by newly licensed 12-seater CNG rickshaws taking away their customers. A few weeks earlier, speaking at the Ficci Annual Day, Delhi?s chief minister stated that a group of senior officers were busy redesigning the city?s bus routes. These moves arise from a lack of understanding of the probl?matique of urban transport. Urban traffic congestion is taken to arise from too many cars (and two-wheelers) on the road, and believed to go away if only sufficient mass transport options are available. However, what would actually make citizens discard their cars for the joys of a BRT bus?
What is the problem at its most fundamental level? It arises from the fact that the demand for urban transport is highly differentiated. Apart from preferences (desired comfort levels, time to destination, waiting time, walking distance, willingness to pay), the demand for transportation between any pairs of origin and destination varies with time of day, day of week, month of year, and also changes over time. The demand is both patterned and non-patterned. The first is, in principle, discernable (children going to school, workers going to the factory, babus going to office, etc). The latter (episodic visits to the doctor, weekend social visits) are essentially random.
However, the patterned demand, even without considering variations due to preferences, is both complex and subtle. Complex, because the patterns have both a ?thick? structure (for example, how many people travel each hour during weekdays between Dwarka and South Delhi), and a ?fine? structure (for example, how many persons travel between Sector 7 of Dwarka and Nehru Place between 9 am and 9.10 am on Tuesdays). Subtle, because the detailed patterns are discernable only with meticulous and continuous observation. But who has the motivation to undertake such careful, detailed study? Why of course, somebody whose living depends upon it!
It follows that public agencies, which are not held to account for net revenues of operations on a daily basis, can, at best, determine through surveys and the like, only the ?thick?, or highly aggregated aspects of demand patterns. This should enable public agencies to plan for major transport infrastructure?Metro routes, trunk bus services and the like. Over time, the alignment of these routes will themselves influence demand patterns, as people respond to locational advantages and disadvantages, conferred by the permanent transport infrastructure.
As a corollary, setting senior bureaucrats to redesign bus routes can, at best, only slightly improve the fit between supply of bus services and the ?thick? pattern of demand. Restricting feeder services for mass transport connectivity to publicly determined bus services will not improve usage of the latter, since the feeders cannot be tuned to the fine structure of demand.
Inducing people to shift from personal transport, whose advantage is the ability to respond precisely to the ?fine? structure of demand?comprising each individual?s actual travel patterns and preferences?requires one to go further than provide infrastructure to respond to the ?thick? demand patterns.
What needs to be done? Inducing people to travel by mass transport would require that private, not publicly provided, transport options be enabled to provide both connectivity services to mass transport entry and exit points, as well as niche or peripheral demand patterns that cannot have a mass transport linkage. Such a move will perish if public transport authorities decree timings, fare levels, comfort levels and detailed routes and halts?these are attributes of the ?fine? structure of demand, and unknowable to public authorities. They must be left to the operators, who alone can acquire the information set necessary. In addition, one must not limit the numbers of operators?this would restrict competition in the supply of such services, leading to high cost and indifferent quality, limiting usage as a result. Where sufficient competition exists, those operators who satisfy the ?fine? structure of demand will survive; the others will exit. Only such restrictions need be placed on the operators as they will promote the objectives of reducing the overall numbers of vehicles on the road and pollution levels, while not seriously impeding the ability to meet the ?fine? demand patterns. This would require that large, medium and small capacity vehicles of different comfort levels, all of which should be clean fuel powered, be permitted.
What about the non-patterned transport demand? Since no pattern exists and travel patterns are random, these must necessarily be served by personal vehicles, or taxis/three-wheelers. No other arrangement can serve the contingencies of a child missing his school bus, or the missus? yearning on a rainy Thursday evening for a meal in a newly opened Greek restaurant in another part of town.
The author is former secretary in the ministry of environment and forests