Future of Indian Mobility – Public Transportation

Sustainable transportation continues to remain one of the most daunting challenges faced by the world today. Several countries have formulated policies and mechanisms that intend to modernise their mobility ecosystem, with the term Future of Mobility gaining much traction in the recent past. The shift to this new paradigm of transport is bolstered by various concerns including: (a) growing population triggering increased travel demand with constrained land space for infrastructural expansion, (b) fast depleting fuel reserves, (c) improving safety, reliability and accessibility of existing systems, and (d) environmental concerns caused by vehicular pollution, with cars contributing to almost 20% of carbon dioxide emissions annually. , as per the Environmental Defense Fund, a United States based non-profit environmental advocacy group.

In India, with the growing population and stress on metropolitan hubs, a comprehensive and collaborative strategy needs to be adopted by the authorities, ecosystem players and end users in order to carve out a mobility paradigm for the future which is financially, socially and environmentally sustainable. The term Future of Mobility encompasses a host of strategies that need to be adopted to improve the state of passenger transport, supported by efforts to improve land-use design and logistics management.

In the Indian context, on the passenger transport front, a host of measures and not limited to the following could be considered:

·      Improving public transportation infrastructure with higher service levels

·      Fostering modal shift from private car to public transport with judiciously well-planned multimodal integration, while further encouraging shared mobility through policy interventions

·      Dis-incentivising private car usage/ownership

·      Accelerating adoption of hybrid and Electric Vehicles (EVs)

·      Implementation of intelligent transportation systems/smart urban traffic control system for efficient traffic management

However, these strategies can deliver outcomes to their full potential only when they are supported by new age land-use design measures that minimise travel as is being envisioned through what we call Smart Cities. Several pilots on modern urban design have been implemented in cities such as Oslo, Taipei, Brussels and Chengdu to name a few, which provide a glimpse of the car-lite, travel-lite mobility paradigm with optimal land-use design and utilisation. On the freight transport front, policies could be framed which push for (a) frontier technology based trucking and logistics management, (b) no-stop & no-wait inter-state passage of freight to improve productivity and reduce operation costs, and (c) improving insurance coverage.

Public Transportation in India

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system was a transformational step to boost public transportation infrastructure in India, with 24 cities in India having functional BRT systems. Barring Ahmedabad, BRT systems of Delhi and Pune have not provided outcomes commensurate with the scale of effort, time and investment. Almost 15 cities in India presently have sub-urban rail systems and 35 cities have adopted metro-rail systems. However, financing and system design continue to remain major impediments for the Indian metro-rail landscape[1] too, with low ridership and travel attractiveness. Interestingly, technology based shared mobility has shown bright prospects, with Ola Cabs and Uber completing almost 3.5 million passenger trips per day in 2018.

The following measures could be considered by governments and city administrations to improve the state of public transportation in cities.

Efficient Transport Planning

Clearly, beyond infrastructure, these systems could not impact a change in passenger choice behaviour which led to their non-performance. In order to ensure better returns on such public investment, efficient planning with regard to route design, public accessibility, fares, fleet management, scheduling, holding capacity at hubs on the service side and equitable financing models in partnership with the private sector need to be explored. City administrations should design routes and based on travel demand, ridership pattern and urban design along with several other factors.

Multi-Modal Integration

Further, accessibility to public transport facility is one of the most important reasons contributing to ridership, as most commuters give high weightage to first-mile and last-mile connectivity. Such door-to-door multi-modal integration which minimises the access time, waiting time and travelling time on every passenger trip needs to be implemented for all public transport systems. Octopus card system in Hong Kong and EZ Link card system in Singapore are good examples of how well integrated systems have ensured over 80% passenger trips[2] are covered using public transport. The One Nation One Card in India is indeed a good step in this direction and should increase public transport usage.

New Service Design

Differentiated service designs will help Indian cities improve intra-city bus transport ridership with inclusion of express services, limited stop services[3] and short turning services serving different kinds of passengers with different service attributes. A well-managed bus fleet supported by a smart traffic control system that provides bus priority would reduce passenger trip duration, encouraging more patrons to take the bus. Also, facilities at the bus stations and inter-modal interchanges determine the overall attractiveness of the public transport system.

Under the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) policy announced by the Government of India, City Administrations shall procure fleet of electric buses which would need efficient planning, budget allocation, trainings, and proper management.

New Financing Models

On the financing side, the government needs to propose innovative models which ensure financial sustainability of operations, in terms of low fares for the passengers and equitable profits for operators. The rail plus property model of Hong Kong[4] which ensures MTR’s profitable operations is a good case study for the world to emulate. Singapore’s government contracting model for its bus services is another innovative model through which Land Transport Authority, Government of Singapore owns all transportation infrastructure, packaging routes into bundles[5] and contracts routine operations to private players to ensure a financially sustainable operational model.

The next post, as part of the Future of Mobility Series, shall focus on the private transport sector and its associated issues.

References

[1] Financial constraints may slow down India’s Metro rail story, 2019https://www.livemint.com/Politics/LgLRo75WTlCTGaMo31xxnN/Financial-constraints-may-slow-down-nations-Metro-rail-stor.html

[2] Reimagining public transport in India, 2017https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/in/pdf/2017/10/Reimagining-public-transport.pdf

[3] Optimal bus service design with limited stop services in a travel corridor, 2018https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1366554517302922

[4] How public transport actually turns a profit in Hong Kong , 2019https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/19/how-public-transport-actually-turns-a-profit-in-hong-kong

[5] Optimal bus transit route packaging in a privatized contracting regime, 2018https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856416306826