This last week Delhi began a trial run for its first bus rapid transit corridor, a 5.8 kilometer stretch in the southern part of the city. To put it mildly, the start has been anything but stellar: a Google News search for “brt delhi” comes up with over 70 news articles from the last week, almost all of them sensationally pessimistic. Here are a few of the headlines: BRT nightmare for school kids on way home, Kids bear the brunt of BRT mess, Delhi bus corridor: Fiasco continues, BRT corridor chaos worse than ever.

From what I’ve heard from our experts in Mumbai, the project has had several hiccups like lack of signage, signal systems not working properly, bus breakdowns, and motorcycles and bicycles entering the bus lanes. But overall these are problems that can be fixed with time and bus operations can be improved.

What seems to be a bigger problem than the hitches and hiccups of the system itself is the destructive roll that the media has played, unfairly skewing the coverage of the trial run to make the problem seem worse than it actually is.

In the video below, for example, you can see footage of cars, rickshaws and motorbikes snared in traffic alongside the bus lane. What you can also see, however, is that in every shot with a passing bus, the bus is jammed packed with people. It’s a clear indication that the system is popular among people who are using it.

Headlines Today on Delhi BRT from EMBARQ Network on Vimeo.

When you watch the news footage though, you will notice that the journalist never interviews a single bus passenger to see what their satisfaction is with the system. All they show is disgruntled car owners who fume about what the bus rapid transit corridor has done to car traffic. Read the rest of this entry »

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The sun setting in Mumbai. Photo by d ha rm e sh.

Earlier this week, TheCityFix ran the first part of an interview with Krishnaraj Rao, a citizen turned activist, who now spends a significant portion of his day advocating for pedestrian rights in Mumbai. Through a movement called Sahasi Padayatri, Mr. Rao has been engaged in a variety of initiatives and non-violent agitations to improve conditions for pedestrians; he has demarcated lanes for pedestrians on streets where pedestrians compete with buses, cars and motorcycles due to the lack of walkable footpaths and he has dumped rubbish blocking pedestrian areas at the steps of local government office buildings to raise awareness of the obstacles facing pedestrians. Below is the second part of the interview.

How do you see your activities fitting into the larger environmental movement?

Sahasi Padyatri is essentially focused on creating a pedestrian-friendly and citizen-friendly environment. We believe that a preponderance of public transport and a diminished role of private transport is the way for our city to attain sustainability. We believe that public space is a precious resource that must be jealously guarded.

I set out in June 2007 as an activist against the various aspects of Economic Growthism that are causing global warming today, and addressed about 25 audiences until March on this topic at colleges, schools, Rotary Clubs etc.

In December, I met Santosh Jangam, who sells books on a train for a living. This meeting and our later association in creating the Sahasi Padyatri movement brought the realization that unless we could connect the anti-global-warming agenda to the interest of the common man, we were bound to strive in vain for a change that would stubbornly refuse to happen.

To me, the effort to render our city suitable for walking and peacefully commuting by public transport is co-terminus with making my world more energy-efficient and a cleaner, better place for all creatures and all species.

How is your organization using IT – cell phones, blogs, etc. – to organize and generate support?

For several months, I have been blogging on this issue, and on other issues related to climate change, at my blogsites. (You can read them here and here.)

I have networked furiously with several individuals and organizations late in 2007 and early in 2008. My intensity on the internet has abated only since February, when I stepped out of the cyber-world into meatspace.

I email close to a hundred concerned citizens, media persons and authorities with my communiques on pedestrian issues, and network furiously using SMS, mobile phone and phone for this purpose. I am happy that newspapers like DNA are supporting our campaign and publicizing our mobile number and email address, putting hundreds of like minded citizens in touch with us. Read the rest of this entry »

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A few weeks back we posted a video from SlateV about “The stupidest bike lane ever” which featured a short and poorly thought out bike lane near the University of California Los Angeles. Now SlateV has made a follow up video in response to readers feedback, documenting several other stupid bike lanes. Check out the video above.

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Here Pedestrians hold back traffic after painting a sidewalk on the street. Photo from Friendlyghost.

Krishnaraj Rao lives in Borivli, a suburb of Mumbai known for its famous Sanjay Gandhi National Park, and, more recently, its residents who have taken to the streets demanding that pedestrians be treated with respect. Along with Mr. Santosh Jangam, a bookseller turned activist, Mr. Rao is the head of a movement called Sahasi Padayatri which is leading a grassroots campaign on behalf of pedestrian rights in Mumbai. Through this movement he has been engaged in a variety of initiatives and non-violent agitations to improve conditions for pedestrians; he has demarcated lanes for pedestrians on streets where pedestrians compete with buses, cars and motorcycles due to the lack of walkable footpaths and he has dumped rubbish blocking pedestrian areas at the steps of local government office buildings to raise awareness of the obstacles facing pedestrians. This weekend I had the chance to correspond with him by email. Below is the interview.

How have cars and motorbikes changed Mumbai’s streets?

Cars and motorbikes – especially the former – represent the prevalence of speed, brute force and money power in our society. They represent a constant threat to those who don’t have these vehicles, and subtly divide people into haves and have-nots. By virtue of being seated in an automobile, one feels one has a divine right to make hundreds of other people scurry out of his way as he approaches. I feel this mentality needs to be curbed for the good of society.

At what point did you realize that pedestrians were being forced off the roads? Has it been a long process, or has it happened rapidly?

Personally, realization of this fact dawned only in the past year, when, because of my concern about climate change, I began increasingly to leave my car parked and go out walking or using public transport.

But I do realize that this erosion of the pedestrians’ right to walk safely has been gradual over the past two decades. I recognize now that the motorist’s ability to honk a blaring horn and to subtly threaten to run down someone who obstructs him has skewed the balance. The pedestrian, by contrast, endlessly adjusts and modifies his path, peacefully yields the centre of the road to moving vehicles and the roadside to parked vehicles etc. The pedestrian rarely protests – and this has been his undoing. Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo by Monica Almeida from The New York Times.

This weekend the New York Times had an article about a neat initiative to transform bus stops in Los Angeles into something called “community living rooms” - that’s a pleasant and clean space to sit down while waiting for the bus. According to the Times, LA’s bus stops are in chronic disrepair even though 1.2 million passengers use the buses every week. Jennifer Steinhaur reports that,

…Scores of bus stops around town, especially in the areas south of Interstate 10 and close to downtown, not only are trash-strewn and barren but also offer no place to sit. Old women press heavily against their walkers, peering down the street to see if the bus is coming, and children cling to the bus stop sign, often perilously close to the street, as their mothers beckon them sharply to stand back.

But things are starting to change, at least at around 15 spots in the city. Read the rest of this entry »

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Crystal Davis looks at urbanization and its impact on environment and development in Part I of a three-part series. Check out other analysis by Crystal at http://earthtrends.wri.org.

Now home to half of the world’s people, cities are increasingly at the forefront of our most pressing environmental challenges. While the current pace of urbanization is not unique in human history, the sheer magnitude of urban growth–driven by massive demographic shifts in the developing world–is unprecedented, with vast implications for human well-being and the environment. However, where cities pose environmental problems, they also offer solutions. As hotspots of consumption, production, and waste generation, cities possess unparalleled potential to increase the energy efficiency and sustainability of society as a whole.

Figure 1. Economic and Social Welfare in Urban vs Rural Areas

Cities generate a disproportionate share of gross domestic product (GDP) and provide, on average, greater social and economic benefits to their inhabitants than do rural areas. As a result, increased urbanization often correlates to higher national incomes (see Figure 1 above).

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Photo by existentist.

Today’s New York Times has a letter to the editor I wrote in response to the paper’s . Entitled “Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing”, the piece notes that the honeymoon period for biofuels seems to be nearing an end, at least in some circles:

Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo by James Cridland.

In ancient Indian and Chinese texts, writers noted that the ultimate form of torture involved subjecting captives to loud and horrible noises. It’s an interesting paradox that we now live in the modern world as free citizens, and all we need to do is stroll down the street to be exposed to noise loud enough to become physically ill, elevating our blood pressure to unhealthy levels, interfering with our sleeping patterns, and causing a whole host of stress related diseases.

On the majority of roads in cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi, noise pollution can measure nearly 80-90 decibels during peak hours. That’s roughly the equivalent of standing just 15 feet from a passing freight train! Noise levels above 80 decibels are detrimental to healthy hearing and the Australian EPA suggests that prolonged exposure to noise at or above this level can cause deafness. It’s such a serious problem that researchers in the EU found that the social cost of noise pollution for that region is 0.4% of total GDP. In Indian city’s it must be a lot worse. (For normal tension free conversation one requires a background noise level less than 55 decibels.) Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo by MumbaiDailySnapshot.

From the Boston Globe, this just in: “More than 20,000 people have been killed on Mumbai’s notoriously overcrowded train system over the past five years — many of them crushed, run over or electrocuted — according to official data.”

“No other city in India has so many people traveling by one mode of transport. There are a minimum of 10 deaths daily on the railways,” A.K. Sharma, the railway commissioner, was quoted as saying.

Stayed tuned for a post from our Mumbai-based transport engineer Madhav Pai on ‘Super Dense Crush Load.

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Photo by Lush.i.ous.

Joe Foti, a colleague of mine at WRI, just alerted me to a sprawling Wikipedia page on freeway revolts, a term referring to citizen efforts to stop freeway construction in their neighborhoods. In some cases the entry simply lists freeway projects that we’re “canceled, truncated or stalled” in a particular region. In other cases, it’s more thorough, providing detailed analysis of why residents opposed freeway construction and some of their efforts to stop it.

Click here to view the entry.

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