The Hindu : Corporate participation in transport sector urged

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 25, 2003

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Corporate participation in transport sector urged

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI MARCH 24. Large corporate groups should be encouraged to enter the public urban transport arena in Delhi for improving its efficiency and connectivity and for keeping a check on the ticket costs, an economic blueprint prepared for Delhi by the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies and Confederation of Indian Industry has urged.

The report titled "Economic Agenda for Delhi: A Proposed Blueprint'' states that the corporate groups entering the transport sector should also be allowed access to a low-cost debt market through tax-free bonds for making their entry more viable.

Stating that the Government's role should not be restricted to just providing more buses, increasing the kilometres of the Metro Rail Transit System and establishing rail links with neighbouring towns, the report notes that besides performing all these roles, the Government should also create favourable conditions for development of independent institutions and expanding the scope of public-private partnership.

Simply put, the study proposes considerable changes in bye- laws, pursuing a path of cooperation rather than confrontation, involving major league players in this sector, devising an incentive mechanism to discipline the commuters and creating conditions for business to thrive.

Noting that this was a recipe for tackling transport problems in future, the report points out how during the last five decades the transport planning has been undertaken for metropolitan Delhi by ignoring the concept of National Capital Region.

``It has led to a situation of skewed development of public transport infrastructure resulting in converging population in Delhi and underdevelopment in terms of connectivity of the suburbs.''

An equitable developmental approach for the NCR in earlier years would have arrested the convergence and allowed strong growth in the suburban areas in and around Delhi.

Thus, it said, the planning of the mass transport systems for Delhi should be focussed at the NCR than metropolitan Delhi.

In this regard, the study said the Urban Transport Operating Plan (UTOP) of the Delhi Government has partially addressed the issue, especially of to and fro travel of commuters from adjoining areas of Delhi. Still, it said the UTOP falls short of developing an adequate public transport system in these areas and integrating it with the mass transport systems of Delhi as planned in the UTOP.

Of the view that NCR Planning Board has a role to play in the state of affairs, the study laments that it is due to the poor level of the public transport system in Delhi's neighbouring townships of Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida and Ghaziabad that the level of development and integration has not been up to the mark.

In the absence of proper public transport, inhabitants of these satellite townships are forced to rely on personalised transport systems. Thus, even if the mass transport system becomes a reality, it may not be able to serve the larger interest as envisaged for the year 2021, the study observed.

As such it recommended a multi-modal transport mix to ease the demand pressure on the existing road transport system for providing alternative reliable mass transport to the passengers. Also, it called for integration of rail and road network for making the system more reliable and providing more amenities to the commuters to woo them away from private transport.

Simultaneously, it has recommended regional transport development and linkages for proving a solution to the transport problems of Delhi and its satellite townships.

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