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Drive around the ban

We should, indeed, be worried about the ill effects of the increasing use of personal vehicles in our cities as they harm our health in a number of ways.

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At a recent conference on sustainable urban transportation in Delhi, a senior bureaucrat lamented that many people now owned two or three cars, and if something was not done to stop the influx of private vehicles into our cities, life would become intolerable.

A police officer was really worried that the introduction of Tata’s ‘One Lakh Car’ would make his job intolerable. And now, we hear that some officials in Mumbai would like to bar the entry of the One Lakh Car so that the city does not get choked.

We should, indeed, be worried about the ill effects of the increasing use of personal vehicles in our cities as they harm our health in a number of ways.

To understand the real issues here, let us first look at the facts and numbers. According to the Census of India, less than 20 per cent of families own cars in rich cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

The National Council of Applied Economic Research estimates that only families that earn more than Rs10 lakh a year own one car per family on an average. This is the situation that prevailed in cities like London, Paris and New York more than 50 years ago.

At present, car ownership per person in Singapore and London is more than that in Delhi by two and five times respectively.

Even road space availability in those cities is about the same as our cities. Therefore, car ownership rates in our cities are quite low by international standards.

The second issue concerns restricting the registration of cars in our cities. It is easier said than done. Firstly, who should not be allowed to register a car?

The people who don’t have one already? This would be patently unfair and politically impossible. Do we then restrict the buying of a second or third car?

How do we ensure that cars registered under different names can’t be used by the same family? How do we prevent cars being registered in adjoining districts? Our cities are not surrounded by the ocean as Singapore is.

The third confusion is about the One Lakh Car itself. We assume that sales would go up drastically. But this may not happen. It is not as if a One Lakh Car is not available today.

Most young professionals buy their first car costing less than Rs1 lakh. These are the second hand cars available in the market. It is not just the cost of the car that matters. Running any car costs more than Rs5,000 a month, including maintenance, insurance and depreciation.

This sets the lower limit of car ownership at a family income of about Rs2 lakh a year. Lastly, it is possible that many buyers of Maruti 800 would shift to the One Lakh Car quite happily.

So what do we do? I think it would be quite silly of us to even think that we can restrict car ownership by methods that are not socially fair and equitable.

Bans and quotas are not likely to work. We should actually work on issues that matter. Use of cars produces harmful emissions, injuries and deaths due to accidents.

Tackling these concerns will also generate public support. This can be done in a fair and transparent manner: by preventing car owners from causing harm to others by making it difficult to use cars inside the city.

At present all policies of city governments (including those of Delhi and Mumbai) are encouraging car ownership and use by widening roads, constructing flyovers and signal-free roads.

We have to first reduce the subsidies car owners benefit from. All car owners should be made to pay for city road construction and maintenance through an annual registration fee proportional to the road surface area occupied by cars.

In addition, all car owners must be charged an annual pollution tax based on the amount of harmful gases and carbon dioxide produced by each car model.

Lastly, parking fees should be based on the real estate value of the parking place and no free parking allowed on any public road or land. This would be entirely fair according to the free market principles we all love.

Once we agree to these policies, we could make our streets safe for walking and bicycling, and introduce Bus Transit Systems on all major city roads.

These improvements, along with pedestrian-only zones, landscaped streets, and neighbourhood schools would reduce the demand and need for car use. There will then be no need for any bans on cars.

The writer is professor and coordinator, Transport Research and Injury Prevention Programme, WHO Collaborating Centre, IIT, Delhi.

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