My City My Responsibility - Role of Transportation for all

Dear All, 

Transport under SDGs

Last year, we collected a few citizens' perspectives on certain issues related to Urban Sustainability. These included Housing, Transport, Governance or Peoples Participation, Heritage (both Cultural and Natural), Waste management and Air pollution, Disaster Risk Assessment and Green Open Spaces. For relating it to a broader vision, we used the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework especially the SDG 11 which deals with making cities and settlements sustainable. We compiled all citizens inputs and formed the Citizens Charter for Sustainable Pune. In our event on Citizens Charter and Action Agenda for Sustainable Pune we shared the same document with all of you. On analyzing all the Citizen inputs, we realized that if these inputs are put up as actionable points it will be a good guideline to follow by all.

Last week we saw actionable points on Housing, below are the points from Sustainable Transport perspective as guidelines at individual, community and governance level. 

Kindly note that we all are facing impacts of increasing air pollution, rapidly changing climate and urbanization. Provision of inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable transport will definitely play a major role in lowering the emissions generated substantially due to transport. This will help in mitigating the impacts at local as well as global level. All we need is individual as well collective actions at all levels. 

Individual level

• Analyse or consider if there is a need to buy a new vehicle. 
• Adhere to basic traffic rules and speed limits.
• Ensure your protection by using required safety gears.
• Ensure timely and proper maintenance of your vehicle in order to ensure better fuel efficiency. 
• Understand the importance of PUC norms, and ensure that your vehicle emissions are within the norms. 
• Ask for information on PUC norms and its importance. 
• Practice lane discipline. 
• Make way for ambulance and differently-abled persons riding on the road. 
• Use public transport where ever possible and ask for better public transport.
• Respect the job done by bus drivers and try to cooperate with them. 
• Check the feasibility of shared transport like car pooling. 
• Check the feasibility of using cycles or walking (not more than 1km) for short distances instead of using your two wheeler.  

Community Level

• Lets advocate for efficient and safe infrastructure for public transport system and non motorized transport like cycling and walking. 
• Lets advocate for better roads and technically designed speed breakers. 
• Lets advocate for CNG or clean fuel based vehicular systems. 
• We can promote E-vehicles once the electricity is being generated from a renewable source. Advocating for E-vehicles currently is costlier and not very sustainable since coal is the source of our electricity generation. 
• Lets advocate for car free zones and affordable last mile connectivity like CNG auto rickshaws or rental cycles or mini buses provision at every 500 m instead of using private vehicles. 
• Lets advocate for travel time from one place to other in a city to be max. 40 mins considering crowded areas. 

Public transport in Pune

Governance/Policy Level: 

• Enforce strict penalties for disobedience of traffic laws for all, irrespective of financial or social status.
• Consider differently abled, pregnant women, children and senior citizens while designing modes of transport. 
• Ensure accessibility and affordability for all. 
• Implement comprehensive mobility plans and Parking policy defined by local organizations. 
• Roads should be designed considering safety of all stakeholders like street vendors, hawkers, cyclists and walkers by providing better lighting system or security forces wherever required. 
• Regular maintenance of roads ensure safety of the commuters.  
• While constructing a flyover, take the feedback of local organizations working towards making traffic management better in the city.  
• Involve active citizens if required for ensuring there is no traffic congestion.
• Collaborate and work in coordination with the local organizations working in for ensuring there is no traffic congestion. 
• Strategize mechanisms for tie-ups with local organizations, NGOs, communities and corporate sectors for making transport in the city sustainable. 
• All the para-transit modes of transport should be enhanced to CNG and considered into the main stream of transportation . 
• Employees that work directly for providing transit services should be provided with proper medical care and employee benefits. 

These are some inputs given by 200 odd people, we are looking for more such inputs and suggestions from you in order to make our Citizens Charter for Transport a better Action Agenda. 

Email me at pournima@samuchit.com OR like, share and comment on our FB page  @ https://www.facebook.com/SustainableCityPune/

Pournima Agarkar.

www.samuchit.com

My City My Responsibility - River ecosystem services

Dear All,

In my last blog we saw how river revival done in an appropriate way, can enhance the river ecosystem and in turn provide us with lots of benefits. These benefits that we get from a healthy river ecosystem are known as ecosystem services offered by the river. 

The picture below shows the different categories of services offered by our rivers. These are provisioning/supplying, regulatory, cultural and supporting. 

Source: Ecosystem and their services

Though transportation is one of the supplying services offered by the rivers, I feel there are serious problems with the way transport is being proposed for Mula - Mutha river system. More about this next week!

Pournima Agarkar.

My City My Responsibility - Towards River Revival

Dear All, 

Our city is full of role models because of which I feel fortunate to be a Puneite. These people not only motivate you but also create an awakening within you to do something for the city.  

One such personality is Mr. Vinod Bodhankar. He began with a citizens movement with the One hour per week for the city - an initiative to clean the garbage that other people throw around the nalas/streams or rivers. He believes that River is our mother and to ensure that our rivers are clean we need to understand that the waste we throw 'away', goes nowhere but right into our rivers polluting them.  

Later on, he initiated the SagarMitra Abhiyan in 2011 with the help of 150 students where each student had to collect plastic from his household for a month and get it to the school where it was then purchased by the Plastic Manufacturers and Recyclers for recycling. This initiative spread rapidly in the city through various schools and in six years i.e by Jan 2017 almost 4.8 lakh citizens of Pune city adopted the waste plastic segregation at source. Around 50 tons of plastic was fetched and given for recycling at zero cost of recollection and transport. 

From his work, it is very clear that awakening among mind and heart is required in order to awaken the hand for action. For the same, this Abhiyan focused on understanding a basic ideology that land slopes into stream, stream slopes into a river and a river slopes into an ocean. Hence when you throw plastic waste on land it ultimately goes into our oceans where the life below water suffers. We do see images where plastic is found in the stomach of the fishes and turtles by killing them. Sometimes resulting in even extinction of some species of fishes and destruction of some ocean ecosystems.

Awakening among the school going children with the help of this basic concept has impacted in segregation and collection of huge volumes of plastic waste from their homes to recycling. The sense of responsibility, understanding, involvement and service that the children have shown through this act can be easily replicated by all of us. 

If each of us decide to segregate only plastic from our household (which can be easily done) and send it to recycling. We will be contributing towards river revival and can save our rivers and the life below water for sure. Lets act upon it. 

Pournima Agarkar.

Pune Vs Public Transportation

Today I am writing about a day to day hassle faced by all in Pune – A reliable means to Commute.

This is a big issue in Pune due to callous attitude towards Public transportation. It is surprising to know a fast growing city like Pune is not giving Public transportation its due importance. This is exactly why Pune has the highest number of 2 wheelers in the country and the city has turned from a cycle city to a 2 wheeler city.  Everyone who comes to Pune is forced to buy a 2 wheeler or a car because there is no other viable alternative available for day to day commutation. Pune’s 31 lakh population has 21 lakh registered vehicles. 

I also faced the exact same problem when I came to Pune. Not having a personal vehicle, I started relying on buses. It’s a huge waste of time and money waiting for buses which are low in frequency, with irregular timings and gets cancelled without prior notice. Here I would like to narrate my recent experience.  I usually travel to office via bus 276 which according to the bus conductors comes in an interval of  10-20 min. On Jan 27, I had to wait for more than 1hr 20 min for a bus. After about 1hr 05 min , a bus came which was so full (obviously)  that no one from my stop could enter in that bus. Again I waited for 20 more minutes hoping for a 2^nd one, but in vain, finally had to drop my trip. This happened at 10 in the morning which is a rush hour.  Just yesterday I waited for 40 minutes for the same bus – very clearly no schedule/timetable followed. While waiting during both days, I saw minimum 20 buses to MaNaPa, coming at an interval of 2-3 minutes, at times together,  most of them vacant or carrying less people. Large number of empty MaNaPa buses shows the inefficient route planning and  bad scheduling of PMPML.

Parisar did a comparison of bus services in Indian cities in 2012 and  PMPML received an overall ‘C’ grade and a poor score on all parameters. As expected, PMPML’s performance is below average on parameters like regularity, network reach, frequency, breakdown rate and average fare. Its services are unreliable as it has  low regularity and high breakdown rates - more than twice the average break down rate for other cities. It has fewer buses, poorer frequency and fewer bus stops. Moreover, it also charges more than other cities.

The latest Development plan for Pune has a Standard of living Index survey which shows 39.5% population have low standard of living index, 46.9% medium and 13.6% high. So how do these low and medium people commute without corporation providing a reliant, easy public transport? 

This is a simple calculation that shows economics of using public and private modes for my trip:

Option 1-Bus
From - To	Mode	Distance (km)	Fare (Rs)	Time (min)	Comments
Home (Medi point hosp, Aundh) - Bremen Chowk Bus stop	Auto	2.1	30	10	There is a bus stop right outside my society - but have rarely seen a bus there.
Avg bus wait time				45
Bremen Chowk - Law college Rd	Bus	7.4	15	20	Wait time for Bus - 45 minutes
Total		9.5 km	Rs 45	70 min	2 modes
Option 2 - Taxi
From - To	Mode		Fare (Rs)	Time (min)	Comments
Home - Law college Road	Car	8.5	140	30
Wait time for taxi to reach				10
Total		8.5 km	Rs 140	40 min	1 mode
Option 3 - 2 wheeler
From - To	Mode	Distance (km)	Fare (Rs)	Time (min)	Comments
Home - Law college Road	Bike	8.5	40	25
Total		8.5 km	Rs 40	25 min	1 mode

From this, its very clear that I should choose a 2 wheeler with respect to saving time, money and ease of commute if the present public transport system continues. Then why should people use buses?  In pune, 2 wheelers take up almost 60-70% of road space. This  trend is highly unsustainable causing high pollution, congestion, increased accidents, increased carbon footprint making city chaotic.  Only solution to this is efficient PUBLIC transportation. If you increase the frequency of buses, increase the number of bus stops (so that less of para transit - autos- has to be dependent) and provide better routing, then Option 1 becomes the best available option out of the 3.

During the  Smart citie's citizen engagement,  public transportation received maximum voting and was ranked no 1 issue to be solved. When one checks the smart city proposals, its highly disappointing to find the components included. The following components are included for Smart Public transportation: GPS and real-time monitoring of buses, Smart bus stops with public information systems, Real-time tracking of buses through mobile apps, Vehicle health monitoring and intelligent road asset management.

What really Pune's Public transportation requires is:

• ·         Increased fleet size
• ·         Better Routing
•           Expanding the service area
• ·         Reduction in Off road buses
• ·         Better Scheduling and  Management

Once this is provided,  rest will make any sense.  Unless otherwise you reduce the 1 hr interval between the buses, what is the point of monitoring it?  Major shock is the money allocation - Out of the total Rs 2932 Crores smart city proposal, only Rs 393 crore (13% ) is for Pan city Transportation. Aundh Baner Balewadi, which was chosen for area development gets 1086 crore for its transportation improvement. Logic ????

  

A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars, it is where the rich use public transportation – Mayor of Bogota

 Kindly share your views here. 

Anu Kuncheria

anukuncheria@gmail.com

MUSINGS FROM PRIYADARSHINI KARVE: Technology-driven or Sustainability-driven?

**This blog entry is related to my musings from Sept 8, in which I have raised the question of what is more important - focusing on SMART or focusing on Sustainability.**

SMART cities are essentially technology driven. In fact the very concept of SMART cities was created by Information Technology companies as a marketing tool to sell the range of SMART technologies that they had developed and were working on. The focus of some of these technologies is to deliver various essential services efficiently and smoothly and some technologies are useful in improving governance. Of course, in order for the IT technologies to be effective, other technological inputs also need to go in. Thus, for example, if you have flyovers, traffic islands, AND a SMART network controlling the traffic lights in such a way as to minimise congestion, it will in general improve the efficiency and comfort of traveling around in the city. Problem solved, as far as some advocates of SMART cities are concerned.

When we are planning a Sustainably SMART city, we want every intervention solving every problem to also deliver two co-benefits - social equity, and environmental protection. Both of these ingredients are missing from the 'solution' described above.

The use of flyovers conveniently assumes that all transport is happening by motorised vehicles. The 'rare' bicyclist or bullock cart then has to be 'allowed' to go against the flow of traffic. The smooth functioning of such a road network depends on the number of bicyclists being small! Are the people who cannot afford or do not want to use motorised vehicles second class citizens, whose transportation needs are to be considered as 'exceptions' in the overall system?

If traffic moves smoothly, the air pollution and fuel consumption will certainly be reduced - if the number of vehicles on the road does not increase! I have worked mainly in the cooking energy sector, and an oft-seen phenomenon from that sector is worthwhile to mention here. Rural poor are given more efficient cookstoves, in an expectation that it will reduce consumption of wood for cooking and the time spend in the work of collecting fire wood. However, what actually happens is that the families start cooking more or start cooking more complex recipes, rather than actually consuming less fuel! Of course, I am not saying that this is a bad thing, but just pointing out that human nature also plays an important role in deciding the outcome of a technological intervention. I know a few people who, in spite of owning cars, actually use two wheeler vehicles for daily commute to avoid traffic snarls. But if traffic is flowing smoothly, I am sure they will be tempted to use their cars more often! Thus, one cannot say for sure what the effective impact on air pollution will be, considering how human nature reacts to the changed situation.

The challenge for us, who are thinking Sustainbly SMART then, is to come up with the solution that will solve the basic problem of traffic congestion, while addressing the issues of social equity and environmental pollution in a foolproof way. Since I am not a corporate giant wanting to create a product to sell, I am not driven by the need to incorporate my pet technology in the solution! I am also not anti-technology, so I will be happy to use technologies, IF they serve my purpose.

And where do the various public transport options fit into this discussion?

In the last week or so, I have received some interesting suggestions with respect to the urban transport issue. I also have some thoughts of my own. What about you? Please feel free to share your ideas, either in response to the blog or by email to samuchit@samuchit.com.

                                                                                           Priyadarshini Karve

Director

Samuchit Enviro Tech

#BeModernBeResponsibleBeRespectful

    Samuchit Enviro Tech.     samuchit@samuchit.com     www.samuchit.com