Urban mobility: Lessons from the West : The Tribune India

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Urban mobility: Lessons from the West

Staying in Spitalfields, an old quaint district of Central London, I would plan my day’s movements — places to visit for work or leisure all on my mobile App.

Urban mobility: Lessons from the West


By Rajnish Wattas

Staying in Spitalfields, an old quaint district of Central London, I would plan my day’s movements — places to visit for work or leisure all on my mobile App. No way I was going to take a ‘Black cab’ or even an Uber ride; besides no money for such extravaganzas, why risk getting struck up in traffic for an appointment?

Armed with a multi-modal smart card available easily at any ‘Tube station’, I had all the mobility choices on my fingertips. Real-time options are shown on the App — whether I wanted to take the subway, bus or the boat! If it was a nice sunny day, I would prefer to sit on the upper deck of the ubiquitous London ‘Red Bus’ enabling me commanding views of the city or perhaps even better just walk. 

Similarly in New York, living in Manhattan, one of the most expensive and densely populated parts of the world, one can easily reach any destination by bus, subway or an affordable Uber cab. A subway stop is not more than 5-10 minutes of a comfortable walk from your doorstep. Cycling, too, is becoming a major urban movement option in both these cities, more so in London. New York is also busy creating exclusive biking tracks by apportioning a part of the main motoring carriage way. Even dedicated bus lanes are beginning to show up at places. But the defining credo of both the cities is making walking to be as safe, pleasant and fun so that short distances and the last-mile connectivity to the public transport hub, becomes one seamless flow. 

Walking is a pleasure in both London and New York as the sidewalks are nearly 20-30 feet wide along the main streets and perhaps a little lesser on the smaller ones. The sidewalks are a model of safety, convenience and aesthetics adorned with planters, flower beds and leafy trees. In summer many cafes spill over to the sidewalks adding colour, life and social rub to the ‘City that never sleeps.’ Can we say that of Chennai, Mumbai, Bengaluru or even New Delhi? 

The basic governing principle in these global cities is that the streets are primarily for the pedestrians. Unlike the narrow uneven pavements in most Indian cities choked with encroachers, vendors and with terrible engineering like high kerb heights, greatest care is accorded to these aspects abroad.

A young MNC executive working in Gurgaon nostalgically remembers his stint in Zurich, simply for ease of commuting to his office from home in just 15-20 minutes by a little walking coupled with a short tram ride; in comparison to the often one-and-a-half hour of frustrating commute to his Delhi office. 

“People hurry from corner to corner; cars and trucks roll along the roads, while bicycles and scooters jostle for space. ….,” notes a recent McKinsey global urban mobility study. It further states that by 2030, 60 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities, up from about 60 per cent today. A discernible movement trend is to cater to new “multimodal” services — those that facilitate journeys combining walking, cars, buses, bikes, and trains as well as taxi hailing/sharing services like Uber. Since most historic European cities have a dense urban core built before the onslaught of the automobile, they are more walkable and more likely to have mixed land uses, in comparison to the car-driven sprawling urban suburbs of America. As a result, older cities are more amenable to multi-modal transport solutions than new ones — a model that can be modified suitably for most Indian cities too.

Another concept called ‘bike sharing’ has become hugely popular in many global cities both in Europe and America, and spreading to China and many other big cities across the world. The Economist recalls how a powerful movement for bike-sharing originated in Amsterdam in 1965, when an angry city group held banners screaming “the asphalt terror of the motorised bourgeoisie has lasted long enough”. Three black bicycles were then painted white, left on the street. Thus began the first free communal transport revolution.

Public urban transport is a huge social leveler, engendering greater social inclusion. In London, my daughter’s boss (MD of a global bank) would come to office by the boat on the Thames, while she used the ‘tube’, her assistant would come by the bus and the youthful intern — dressed in the hallmark banker’s traditional black business suit come riding a bike. Can we ever imagine our bureaucrats or the neo-rich doing that in India? It’s also a matter of social attitudes and consciousness towards reducing carbon footprint on the environment, than just providing facilities. 

Road space gets allocated to whichever vehicle occupies it first. “The result is that a bus carrying 40 people is allocated only two and a half times the road space that is allocated to a car carrying only one or two persons,  states an Indian government report. No wonder, one of the greatest tragedies of our Indian cities is that they are getting choked by cars — clearly the worst form of urban transport offender. They are recipes for urban pollution, traffic choking and numerous other city ailments. 

And look at the terrible state of urban mobility even in Chandigarh planned as a ‘pedestrian’s paradise’ by the iconic architect Le Corbusier, boasting of its recently acquired ‘Smart City’ tag. While Corbusier incorporated cycle tracks and a unique classification/hierarchy of the circulation system in its layout plan, it’s now a nightmare of vehicles choking the city’s majestic, wide tree-lined avenues. With one of the highest per capita car ownership ratio in the country, it is also tragically one with the highest road fatalities. So what went wrong with world’s ‘greatest experiment in urban planning of the 20th century’ in just 60 years? 

Although Chandigarh is increasingly making cycle tracks and vigorously enhancing its fleet of buses with other multi-modal options on the drawing board — it’s all taking long to implement at a faster pace. The much-touted ‘metro’ project has been debated ad nauseam for the last decade. How long will we keep dithering on a bold initiative for unclogging the arteries of the City Beautiful? Strangely enough cities like London, New York and Boston built their subways in the late 19th century; and we in the 21st are still debating the issue. 

(The writer is former principal of the Chandigarh College of Architecture; and is an urban heritage expert and author)

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