Future of Transportation in Delhi-NCR Issues and Challenges for Urban Planners

This is an attempt at building a picture about the future of transportation in urban India.

When one reads about self-driving cars and autonomous vehicles in Smart Cities, one wonders whether this future would really be coming to Delhi – National Capital Region (NCR)? So as a student delegate participating in the National Summit on Smart Cities 2018, I asked industry leaders and other participants for their views.

There are four kinds of transportation being discussed. One is autonomous vehicles, second is shared transportation, third is electric vehicles and the fourth is connected vehicles.

According to Mr Sharad Arora, Managing Director, Sensorise Digital Services, the national capital is at the forefront of adopting environmentally friendly practices within the country. He believes that we are on a clear path of upgrading from fossil fuels/ petrol and diesel, to CNG and the future would be seeing a strong presence of hybrid-electric vehicles.

Future is Shared 

In the next 7 years or so, i.e. by 2025, autonomous vehicles might be driving on Delhi roads only at night, and that too in rare cases. We are likely to see increasing use of shared transportation. There would be more Olas and Ubers running on the road as cities would prefer flexible point to point transport.

According to Ms. Yeal Shatzky, Head of Marketing at Amdocs Optima, “Cities are getting smarter and are using state-of-art technology. Via is an interesting example in the US and now in Europe."  

While Uber and Ola are building taxi like marketplaces largely based on connecting individual passengers to individual drivers, Via - a start-up focused on the carpooling opportunity has raised US $ 250 million of funding led by Daimler, to expand outside of the US. Initially, the Via service was launched exclusively in Manhattan in 2014, and expanded to Chicago and then Washington D.C in November 2015 and August 2016 respectively.

The company's mobile app facilitates shared travel for a flat rate. In order to expedite service, passengers are picked up and dropped off on the corner of a block nearest to their pickup and drop-off locations, and not the exact addresses. The service works more like a dynamic bus-line rather than a ride-sharing service, and charges users a flat rate for a ride. The Via service is approved for use with commuter benefit cards. 

The Delhi Dilemma

As per recent study conducted by Center for Science and Environment - a Delhi based research organization, Delhi - NCR ranks worst in vehicular pollution. The factors contributing to this poor ranking include high volume of vehicles and higher population, as compared to other cities. Delhi's population in 2017 was 1.25 times that of Mumbai, 2.5 times that of Bengaluru, 1.8 times that of Kolkata, 2.9 times that of Hyderabad, and 2.6 times that of Chennai.

This is Delhi's paradox. Even though the city has done well in some aspects of urban commute, such as per trip emissions, those efforts have been negated by high magnitude of population and number of vehicles. Delhi has the highest vehicle stock, which is dominated by personal vehicles.

According to Mr. Dipankar Saha, former head of Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) Air Quality Lab, Delhi has achievements to its credit, including use of CNG and scrapping old vehicles. However, it can do better in terms of emissions by having a robust public transport, traffic management system and appropriate infrastructure for hybrid electric vehicles.

This brings us to two points. One is increasing use of hybrid electric vehicles for public and private transport. Reiterating its commitment to the Paris Agreement, the Government of India has plans to make a major shift to hybrid electric vehicles by 2030, and a large number of companies like Maruti Suzuki, Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata, Toyota, Hero Motor Corp., Ashok Leyland among others, are building these.

Second is the issue of connected transport, and what was said earlier for connected cars, a robust traffic management system and charging stations. 

Going Forward, and Fast

Let me take an example. If hybrid electric cars are going to be prevalent, building the charging infrastructure would be important. There seems to no clear priority being communicated by the relevant Municipality/Local Government. Priority of what the objective is - whether it is to reduce pollution, or improve safety or both.

If the Municipality/Local Government were to communicate that reducing pollution is important and we are looking for partners in developing the electric vehicle charging infrastructure/ traffic management system; entrepreneurs/companies with expertise in Internet of Things (IOT), mobile applications and systems integration involving both hardware and software, would be making proposals/submitting plans. This could then be discussed in the larger community, and thereby contribute to relevant design/implementations.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) – powered, IOT enabled solutions for optimising transportation based on deep domain knowledge, in order to increase passenger safety, and providing actionable inputs to reduce pollution is what the future looks like. Fleet management analytics is something we Computer Science and Engineering students would be greatly fascinated by, and wish to work and contribute towards, if given an opportunity.

Community involvement, partnership with academia, entrepreneurs, private organisations, municipal authorities and government bodies is what is going to get Delhi and the National Capital Region to be smart and vibrant city/region.

 Shivang Ranjan