Decentralisation can combat air pollution

THERE has been an uproar over an article published in ‘Lancet’ in December, which describes the sorry state of health hazard in India due to severe air pollution. India has one of the highest annual average ambient particulate matter PM2.5 exposure levels in the world — in 2017, more than three-fourth of the country’s population was exposed to more than the recommended limit set by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards of India, causing an estimated 12.4 lakh deaths!

Air in Indian cities severely polluted

There is a hue and cry over the severe air pollution in this country, which intensifies during winter every year. Delhi, being the most polluted capital city of the world, breaks the headline quite often. The Indian Medical Association has to declare ‘health emergncy’ in Delhi, and Arvind Kejriwal terms the city a ‘gas chamber’. We know it all, yet get shocked when there is a call for cancellation of the Delhi Half Marathon, or cricketers of a neighbouring country wear masks while fielding at Feroz Shah Kotla, or even a scientific study is published in a science journal.

The situation in the rest of the India, specially in the North, is no way better. According to WHO data, 14 Indian cities figured in a list of 20 most polluted cities in the world in terms of PM2.5 levels in 2016, and 11 out of the first 12 cities are in India.

Oppressive industrial pollution seems likely to make major cities uninhabitable. Apparently, moving the industries far from the cities might work well. Also, to combat air pollution, many cities across the world offer free public transport, at least partially, impose odd-even rule, discourage diesel cars, encourage bicycles, use compressed natural gas-operated vehicles, and impose regulations on fire-crackers. However, common people are still forced to use masks and schools remain closed. Understandably, the suggestions of increasing parking fees and reducing metro fares aim at encouraging public transportation. But, as a supplementary measure, simultaneously, we need to make public transportation cheap and widely available.

Relocating facilities away from cities

Also, decentralisation is a must. Yes, there has been a tendency to spread the wings of the facilities of big cities much beyond the geography of the cities — such a decentralisation would reduce traffic congestion and check pollution  to a great extent. For example, Malaysia has relocated its secretariat to Putrajaya, 34 km from Kuala Lumpur (KL). Cyberjaya, 31 km from KL, aspires to become the Silicon Valley, while the city of Shah Alam, 28 km from KL, has replaced KL as the state capital of Selangor. 

There has been growing international desire to reduce the environmental impact of aviation as well. Big railway stations and airports should be relocated far from the city. 

The Heathrow airport is 30 km from London, Charles de Gaulle airport is 25 km far from Paris, Taoyuan airport is 40 km from Taipei City, and Beijing airport is 32 km from the city-centre. Among the newer ones, Incheon airport, catering Seoul, is 49 km from the Korean capital, Kuala Lumpur International Airport is about 65 km from the city, whereas Narita airport is 77 km away from Tokyo. 

In contrast, while the newly built Hyderabad and Bengaluru airports are 24 km and 37 km away from those cities, respectively, the Delhi airport is just 12 km from the city centre!

Public transport support needed

Understandably, such decentralisation of the city facilities threatens to be an economic burden to the common people, unless speedy, convenient public transport systems supplement that. This is true in countries having socio-economic conditions like ours, and would not even help combat air pollution if taxis and private cars are used to commute to such decentralised facilities.

High-speed trains, connecting far-away airport terminals to the city centres are needed. In KL, the cheap KLIA Express or transit metro trains commute to the KL Central station in around 28 minutes. Trains from Narita airport to Tokyo are cheap and take a little more than half an hour. John F Kennedy airport catering New York is about 23 km from Manhattan, and can be reached by AirTrain and the subway. The high-speed Heathrow Express takes 15 minutes to reach Central London from the airport, whereas the underground tube rail is also convenient and takes about one hour. And when Heathrow's Terminal 5 was opened in 2008, two rivers were rerouted, and tunnelling was done to link the terminal to the London Underground and the Heathrow Express.

In the absence of such rapid mass transport yet, Hyderabad and Bengaluru airports are still difficult to access, both economically and in terms of time management. The proposed Hyderabad Airport Metro Rail and the Metro Rail connecting Bengaluru to its international airport would serve the purpose.

Also, with the advent of several low-cost airlines, environmental impacts of aviation can be spread over more locations. Much of the growth of low-cost airlines worldwide has been decentralised to smaller airports like Luton or Stansted in Greater London.

There have been attempts to shift the government and private offices, IT hubs, etc far from the city centre. What about moving big airports 50-60 km far from the cities, and shifting the legislative activities and the secretariats to different satellite towns far from the capitals, and simultaneously building convenient public transport system to connect them to the city? Study is also needed to explore the possibility of shifting the main train stations a bit away from the cities in the same token.

All we need is a properly-designed long-term plan for decentralisation to combat the killer air pollution, keeping its tremendous human cost in mind.