Instead of freebies, improve city’s public transport: Experts

Schemes such as making travel free for women need to be backed by solid data and could be even skipped if public transport was made more robust in a city like Delhi, experts said on Monday after chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announced that the Delhi Metro and state-run buses would soon be made free for women.

Subhash Chand, head of traffic engineering and safety division, Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), said the step will be good only in a limited way as it would make women feel safe to some extent, but not comfortable.

“To say that this scheme would bring more women passengers to travel in the Delhi Metro or public bus network would be an overestimation. Such freebies are not required if the government focused on comfort, quality and quantity of public transport. Many would give up private vehicles if the government pledges to bring in only AC buses in Delhi,” he said.

Experts said the government should focus on making public transport more reliable and punctual. If women are provided sufficient seats or are even assured safe last mile transit, it would be a sea change from the present scenario, they said.

“The focus should be on ensuring timeliness of buses and accessibility to bus stops. At present, waiting time of any state-run bus in Delhi is minimum 20 minutes, which goes up to 45 minutes,” said Amit Bhatt, transport head of WRI-India.

According to Sanjay Gupta, head (transport and planning), School Planning and Architecture, such decisions need to be taken on the basis of data analysis. “It was only after making the announcement that the government said it would do a feasibility study on the scheme. The government should at least do a rapid assessment of various studies to first know the proportion of women passengers in different modes – buses, metro and even para-transit modes,” he said.

Gupta said there should also be data about how far women usually travel in these modes of transportation. “Also, without a proper study on why a section of women choose not to use public transport and how many are there in this group, assessment of such schemes would become extremely difficult,” he said.

With just about 4,000 buses covering around 557 routes, the fleet of Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) has hit a seven-year low. If the cluster buses are included, Delhi at present has only about 5,400 state-run buses. The government’s own report states Delhi currently needs at least 11,000 buses and by 2020, the requirement is set to touch 20,000. Compare this with the fact that nearly 1,500 vehicles are registered in the city every single day. While the number of buses is dwindling, that of cars is on a steady rise.

“There are estimates that in women’s mobility in Delhi, autos and cabs together account for 35% share followed by 25% in bus and metro. Nearly 18% women prefer to walk, while the rest is private modes,” Gupta said.

First Published:
Jun 04, 2019 06:03 IST

Source: Read Full Article