Tree felling? UT needs to rethink

Sarika Panda Bhatt

ThERE is news that “700 trees would be felled to make flyovers on stretch, starting from Zirakpur till Tribune Chowk”. Is this going to help, the answer is no, based out of various scientific reasons.

The UT government has already constructed lots of roads and expressways and planning for flyovers and road widening — needs to be rethought because more roads will mean more traffic and hence, more congestion.

Examples from the world over show that constructing highways or freeways and flyovers does not solve congestion along select routes and that the construction of high-capacity, limited-access roads as a means of managing automobile congestion in urban areas is doomed to failure.

In fact, academic research and practical experience have demonstrated that an increase in road capacity leads to increase in vehicles as it attracts latent demand as well as reduces public transit and non-motorised use due to compromised access for these modes of transport. This reduces or in some cases even negates the congestion-fighting benefits of the infrastructure projects.

Therefore, any benefit that might result by way of increased average speeds for motor vehicles is quickly neutralised over a few years, leading to growing motor vehicle activity, increased congestion and greater pollution.

The basic planning of Chandigarh was conceived as post war ‘Garden City’ wherein vertical and high-rise buildings were ruled out, keeping in view the living habits of the people. Le Corbusier conceived the master plan of Chandigarh as analogous to human body. Many cities across the country look at the city as the best example of a planned and green city.

The National Urban Transport Policy, 2014, (NUTP-2014) is clear on this: “The objective of this policy is to plan for the people rather than vehicles by providing sustainable mobility and accessibility to all citizens.”

Elevated corridor plan violates one of the first four of the listed NUTP-2014 objectives:

1. Incorporating urban transportation as an important parameter at the urban planning stage rather than being consequential requirement.
2. Bringing about a more equitable allocation of road space with people, rather than vehicles, as its main focus
3. Public transport should be citywide, safe, seamless, user-friendly, reliable and should provide good ambience with well-behaved drivers and conductors.
4. Walking and cycling should become safe modes of urban transport.

A radical new idea

Take the example of the Cheonggyecheon Freeway in Seoul. In the 1950s, the Cheonggyecheon river, bordered by a slum and used as a dumping ground, turned an eyesore because of polluted water. The local authorities decided to cover up the river and build a four-lane elevated freeway on it. What followed four decades after the construction was contrary to what had been envisioned. It led to the deterioration of the Cheonggyecheon area with increased traffic, noise and air pollution.

Today, the highway is gone and the river has been rehabilitated. The resulting green space is a source of urban pride and motor vehicle travel times have actually improved in the neighborhood of the old highway.

Lee Myung-bak’s election agenda in 2001 was pulling down the flyover and restoring the river. He went on to become the President of Korea in 2008. It was first considered a “crazy idea” to tear down what was considered a vital traffic artery that carried 1.68 lakh cars per day. A traffic model was developed to study the possible effects of demolishing the freeway.

In March 2003, Seoul began constructing its first Bus Rapid Transit line as a complement to the city’s existing underground metro system, which serves the route of the freeway and was designed to accommodate 1.20 lakh passengers per day. The 14.5 km Bus Rapid Transit corridor was completed in June, 2003, and the freeway was closed at the same time. In addition, Seoul announced that it would improve bus services in 18 other corridors, with exclusive bus lanes on nine of those corridors. The project had the complete backing of the citizens of the city, who got in return for a blighted freeway, an incredible public amenity.

Flyover removal a global agenda?

Several cities such as San Francisco, Boston, Milwaukee, Trenton, Portland and Chattanooga in the US and Vancouver and Toronto in Canada had also built elevated highways between 1950 and 1980 only to pull them down later to make more space for pedestrians. Melbourne and Auckland too have removed some of their flyovers.

Metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore or Chennai built hundreds of flyovers to address the problem of traffic on the route. But a few years down the line, none of the frustrated commuters on that route feel it has helped their commute in anyway. Travel time is just the same, or has even increased since the past.

Added infrastructure only begets more traffic

With the number of personal vehicles on the roads increasing, governments are pursuing policies whose net effect is still to promote the use of cars and build infrastructure to facilitate them. Decision makers should realise that added infrastructure only begets more traffic and more pollution.

Dario Hidalgo, a global expert in sustainable transport, said: “Flyovers take congestion to the next level”. Hence, the solution to traffic congestion is not road widening or more flyovers, but better public transport and incentives for people to use public transport or even cycle and walk to destinations that aren’t that far off.

Way forward for Chandigarh? 

• Not one mobility expert of repute, from any city in the world, will support the idea that increasing road space with flyovers is a good solution. Flyovers are ugly and unjust to pedestrians, public transport users and bicycle riders. Ultimately, they are rendered useless because the ever-increasing number of new vehicles on the road will choke them with serious congestion as the flyovers descend on their ramps to ‘ground reality’. 
• The National Urban Transport Policy, 2014, calls for a paradigm shift: “from personal vehicles to non-motorised transport (NMT) modes”. Last week, in response to the Delhi air pollution crisis, many newspapers had reported on how global cities are moving towards demotorisation. Paris, once ranked as the “most polluted city in the world”, has banned cars in many central districts on weekends and introduced car-free days in some places. 
• London wants to create an “ultra-low emission zone” from 2017 and introduce clean bus corridors (not elevated corridors) in pollution hotspots. Copenhagen has more bicycles than people, emulating The Netherlands. Many parts of the capital city are closed to vehicles. And the list of cities moving towards demotorisation grows — Zurich, Helsinki, Gothenburg.

The writer is Urban Transport expert with Nagarro and Founder Trustee of Raahgiri Foundation