Even though a National Urban Transport Policy was introduced two years ago to crack the stifling urban transport problems, just three out of 35 Indian cities have a transport regulator.
According to the 2006 policy, a Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) was required to be set up in cities with over a million people to help ease urban transportation, as the current infrastructure is ill-equipped to deal with the problem.
For example, the last two months have seen the chaotic introduction of a bus rapid transit (BRT) system in Delhi. More than anything else, the BRT system exposed poor coordination among various government departments and an absence of proper planning.
But the plan, which also had the backing of multilateral agencies like the Asian Development Bank (ADB), failed to take off as state governments dragged their feet over implementing it. According to Census 2001, India has 35 cities with over a million population spread across 15 states. It is estimated that these Indian cities would require an investment of over $29.5 billion to upgrade their transport infrastructure.
According to officials in the union urban development ministry, UMTAs have been set up in Jaipur, Mumbai and Hyderabad, but in Bangalore, only a land transport authority has been floated. Andhra Pradesh is the only state that has given a legislative backing to its state government?s decision. Other state governments have only used administrative decisions.
The lackadaisical attitude in implementing the policy has set off alarms within the government. M Ramachandran, secretary, ministry of urban development, has written to state governments, urging them to get cracking on setting up UMTAs in cities with over a million population.
In another letter, Ramachandran has also urged state governments to take action on various policy circulars issued by the Centre from
time to time on urban transport issues.
?A number of policy circulars and advisories on the subject of urban transportation have been issued by the ministry of urban development. However, despite considerable time having elapsed, no feedback has been received from most of the states,” the secretary said in the letter.
The letter goes on to add, “As you are aware, urban transport has become a burning issue in the present scenario and the problems of congestion and pollution are increasing by the day. This calls for urgent pro-active measures. Various advisories issued on urban transport, therefore, assume great importance for early implementation.”
Major policy approaches include integrating transport planning with land use, greater use of public transport and non-motorised transport, multi-modal public transport systems and effective regulatory and enforcement mechanisms for competition among transport operators.