'Central parts of city should be pedestrianised'

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">MUMBAI: If there’s one consolation for the city’s weary commuters, it’s that they are not a l o n e . F r o m Bangkok to Beijing and Brussels, speedy, comfortable transport continues to be a major challenge for growing cities world over.<br />Walter Hook, executive director of the Institute of Transportation and Development Policy in New York and a specialist on transport in Asia and Africa, spoke to TNN about what Mumbai could do to ease its crisis.<br />Excerpts:<br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">How does Mumbai’s transport scenario compare to other countries?</span><br />Mumbai is comparable to Tokyo, Hong Kong and New York in terms of high pedestrian trips, large number of rail trips and congestion.I think the appropriate model for the city would be Tokyo or Shanghai, even New York. All these cities have pedestrianised large areas. Tokyo did it in the ‘60s by restricting motorised traffic to the mornings. The central parts of Mumbai, where the density of pedestrians is high, can easily be pedestrianised.<br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">You’ve talked a lot about bus systems. What about the railways?</span><br />Several simple things could be done to increase the capacity of the rail, some of which are being done by the Mumbai urban transport project. But there are areas not served by the rail corridor. A high capacity bus system on arterials leading into the city would be good.<br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Aren’t the city’s roads too narrow for separate bus lanes?</span><br />Quito (in Ecuador) is a mediaeval 16th century city and bus routes go right through the historical core, even though it has extremely narrow streets, narrower than any I’ve seen in Mumbai. What they did was ban all traffic except for buses in one direction. From 6,000 passengers an hour through that corridor, the capacity increased to 30,000. If they hadn’t done that the city centre would have died, economically and environmentally. Even with narrow corridors, you can do a lot. You could reserve one eastwest corridor for buses, and keep the others for mixed traffic. Another simple measure is to have long distance AC express buses which use the flyovers, so that people will use these to come into the city instead of taking the car.<br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Many people feel the only way to increase capacity is to create a new system altogether, an underground metro, for example.</span><br />If you build a metro, it will increase capacity, but it is an expensive technology and it will take 20 years to make the slightest impact on traffic. Every day motor vehicles are increasing- -Mumbai has one of the highest car growth rates in the world— so is it wise to opt for a solution that will do nothing for 20 years? The metro is just a way for the construction industry and consultants to get more contracts. If you have a high-capacity bus system there will be effects within three or four years. And you can design a system that could be upgraded to a light rail, which is what they are doing in Curitiba.<br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">What are the global transport trends?</span><br />The number of public transport users is increasing, but public transport’s share in total transport trips is stagnating or falling. Only in a few cities they have been able to reverse the trend. Bogota is one—six per cent of private car trips have shifted to bike lanes and public transport there. Europe, like the US, has cities which are sprawling out into areas of lower density. In those outlying areas, rail is never going to be economically viable, so public transport use is low. Transport experts agree that such urban sprawl has all kinds of social problems, the question is what can you do about it? In most developing countries, land development regulation is not efficient because people can easily get around it. In our opinion, and this is contrary to that of the World Bank, the best way to avoid the problems of sprawl is to develop lowincome housing designed and located on high capacity public transport routes, so they have easy access. Good transport must be built into the development process. The housing sector must be related to the public transport system. </div> </div>