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Urban Transport in India : Beyond the Nano and Metro… and back to basics

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Bangalore International Centre is happy to announce that it has arranged a Talk on "Urban Transport in India : Beyond the Nano and Metro… and back to the Basics" on Friday, the 14th March, 2008 at 6.30 PM at our Auditorium.

Prof. Madhav Badami, who is a Professor in the School of Urban Planning and McGill School of Environment, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, will deliver the talk on the subject.

Mr. V Ravichandar, Chairman & Managing Director, Feedback Business Consulting Services Pvt. Ltd. and Former Member, Bangalore Agenda Task Force, will preside over the session.

You are cordially invited to this discussion.

P R Dasgupta, Director, Bangalore International Centre, TERI Complex,4th Main, 2nd Cross, Domlur II Stage,Bangalore - 560 071

Tel: 080-25359680; FAX : 080-25356589; Email: pronab@teri.res.in; Website: www.bicentre.org

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murali772's picture

worth attending

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Dr Badami had delivered the same talk at the Centre for Public Policy, IIMB, about a month back. He was talking exactly my language (please see http://bangalore.praja.in...), except that, while he was saying that he had no ready solutions to offer, and that his effort was to open the eyes of the public as well as the decision makers to cost-effective solutions, I was going one step further and stating that mine was the ultimate solution, given the overall Indian scenario. Through mails exchanged thereafter, I was seeking his endorsement of my policy paper, since, unless we can offer solutions, the discussions will go on till kingdom come, and the heavy weight that he is, his endorsement will give my policy paper an added weightage.

A talk definitely worth attending.

 

Muralidhar Rao
tsubba's picture

Dr Badami's talk

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Murali sir, if you attend this, can you post a rough report on what happened. rough bulleted list will do? especially if he makes any bangalore centric points. meanwhile i will try to look him up in the journals. the title is very interesting nano-metro. hope there are actionable insights that give you aha moments. have fun. i attended a talk by kunstler recently. radical guy. went deep into the pysche of modern societies. but most of recommendations truely un-actionable in India. move to rural societies, small scale farming, panned skyscrapers and planes, rooted for trains etc... had a talk on the sidelines. asked him about land fragmentation. he was in a hurry. his answer seemed dismissive. a chat with other attendees provided a better explanation of his position. anyways we need to find our own middle path.
shanezj's picture

Dr Badami's Talk

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I will definitely be there, it's going to be interesting to hear what he has to say in context to where Bangalore is in terms of its urban transport situation. While improving the Bus services, creation of the METRO etc may be solutions, I do believe that citizens need to take greater responsibility in the city's transport issue. Car pooling, greater use of public transport, discipline in lanes etc would work towards making our city a pleasure to drive in.

Anyways will look forward to his Friday's talk.

tsubba's picture

Go back to cycles

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Go back to the bicycle
Source: Deccan Herald
Will the Tata Nano, a Rs 1 lakh rupee revolution or the Rs 6,396 crore ‘Namma Metro’ solve the transportation  woes of the city? Not really, according to Prof Badami.

Prof Badami advocated going back to the humble bicycle and introduction of automobile use fee/tax by governments so as to discourage use of personalised transport.

“There has been a major public concern, when it comes to viable transportation in India, whether it is private/public mode of travel. People have an intense frustration. There is a sense of inevitability. They want more roads for their cars. Then you have the Tata’s who want to provide everybody a car. Conventional urban planning is akin to loosening your belt to cure obesity. More roads and cars could be socially destructible,” Prof Badami said.

Saying that Metro Rail too would not address the issue in totality, he said its aim should be to get more and more people out of their cars and two wheelers.


I would have loved to have attended this talk.

There are many angles to these go-back-to-cycle types of arguments, one is energy. Sri has threatened to give us the funda on peak oil one of these days cant wait.
Another attack is that even if energy was cheap and plentiful, this type of lifestyle is not sustainable.

But these mind experiments are fine, when the chappal hits the tar, people need to get where they are going conveniently, cheaply and safely and in dignity. metro might be expensive, but we pooh-pooh it at our own peril.

i am not dismissing his line, but i would love to hear his comments on the immediate and practical problem. short of a revolution, lets face it, there is no  way to implement this.

s_yajaman's picture

Comments and peak oil

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Tarle,

Agree with you.  These people do not take the politics of implementing this into consideration.  Appealing to people does not work.  That way there would be no need for courts and policemen and jails. 

I think policy makers need to add pricing wedges so that car owners pay the full social costs of owning cars.  You cannot mandate public transport (unless you live in North Korea e.g.) but you can set pricing mechanisms so that 70% of the people use it.  In public transport, I would include things like company buses as well.

Right now policy makers love expressways and elevated roads as they are very visible infrastructure (see how they show L.A. in the movies - freeways with multilevel grade separators and many lanes of fast moving traffic).  Car lobbies are strong and have the voice of the government; pedestrians don't organize and therefore have less political clout.  I personally would love to ride a bicycle for commuting for less than 10 km but am bloody scared (at least as of now) of getting knocked down.

Am reading up as much as I can about peak oil on the following sites - www.theoildrum.com  and www.peakoil.net. Another site is called www.wolfatthedoor.org.uk

I find theoildrum.com the most informative as it has a number of scientists putting up articles and responses need to be data based and not anecdotal (a couple of people I spoke to type of reasoning) to be taken seriously.  You have a wide spectrum of people, but the overall sense is one of doom and gloom.

Will post a document that I am preparing later.  But in a nutshell, peak oil means that oil production for any field will follow a bell curve with increasing rates of production, a plateau and then a steady decline.  What is true for one field will be true for all fields put together.  Path breaking work was done by a geologist called M. Hubbert King who predicted that the US would hit peak oil in 1970 and it actually hit peak oil in 1972.  Again it has not run out of oil, but the annual rate of production will keep coming down, because all the easiest to find oil has been taken out (close to the shores, close to the ground).  The deeper oil needs more pumping to get it out.

Mexico is past peak oil.  Indonesia is a net importer now.  A number of OPEC countries took up reserve numbers in 1980 as export quotas were dependent on reserves.

An added complexity is the ELM (Export Land Model).  Oil producers themselves face increasing domestic demand and with declining production, it means exports decline even more rapidly.  Importers will have to compete pretty hard and might could make right.

Oil prices have been steadily increasing for the past 5 years.  Note how there is no more talk from OPEC that the target price is $35/barrel.  Now the talk is that if it were to hit $85 OPEC will want to cut production.  The "proper" price has been steadily going up.  Some of this is due to the depreciating USD, but even in Euro terms oil is much more expensive.  When demand has gone by about 12% in the last 5 years and prices have gone up by 200% or more ($110 vs $30-35), it says something about supply.

A lot of sh** still waiting to hit the fan your side of the world.  Am watching with interest and trepidation.

Srivathsa

 

 

Drive safe.  It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.

Photoyogi's picture

Back to Basics?

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In the opening slides Dr Badami showed the audience that for a City like Dehi, the maximum fatalities were pedestrians and 2 Wheelers, and these fatalities were caused by cars and Buses
Later he goes on to prove that to reduce congestion the cities should provision more walkways and cycling lanes, which will discourage people to use vehicles for less than 1/2 to 1 Km distances.
He also said that in sections of the city, 4 wheelers are seen to reach speeds of 60-75Kmph (due to lesser congestion) Congestion by the way is a boon for Pedestrians as the slow or static traffic helps them at least cross the road (lol!)
All these comments were quite contradictory.
I do strongly believe that we need to get the 4 Wheelers esp the single occupants not to use their vehicles and to use Public Transport.

--
Praveen Sundaram
AkA PhotoYogi

-- PhotoYogi

murali772's picture

Dr Badami clarifies

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Dear Muralidhar Rao, I will respond to your messages in detail, as I promised to do. In the meanwhile, I just discovered this piece in Deccan Herald: http://deccanherald.com/C... It appears to suggest that I advocated that we should go back to bicycles; I did nothing of the sort, since that would be utterly unrealistic, and even undesirable. I should like to think that my argument last night was considerably more nuanced than that. I am considering a response to the article to make sure that my views are not misrepresented (as I believe they have been), but for now, I should like to place on record what I in fact said last night: that there is of course an important role for cars and other personal motor vehicles (and infrastructure for these modes), given the advantages of these modes, but that there is also a crucially important role for public transit, and yes, for walking and cycling (and infrastructure for these modes), if we want to mitigate the serious impacts of rapidly growing motor vehicle activity, and also given that a) walking and cycling do in fact account for a very significant proportion of all trips in Indian cities, despite their being very difficult and hazardous; b) these modes are potentially viable (and competitive with cars and even metro), for short and medium distance trips, which account for a significant share of all trips, even in very large, rapidly motorizing metropolitan regions like Delhi; c) many more people would likely use these modes -- especially over short distances -- if adequate infrastructure were in fact provided for them, access was not so severely compromised by motor vehicles and planning for them; and lastly, d) pedestrian accessibility is crucially important for the viability of public transit. Given all of this, I said, good urban transport policy should aim to restrict motor vehicles to their highest value uses, by providing a wide range of viable alternatives for a range of road users, and pricing motor vehicle use appropriately, to a) internalize their costs, b) discourage needless and avoidable motor vehicle trips (especially over short distances, caused largely by compromised access and inadequate NMT infrastructure, and inadequate pricing of motor vehicle use, primarily in terms of parking), and c) provide incentives (and funding) for more sustainable choices. I would request you to share my message with your colleagues on Praja (which seems like an awfully interesting forum). I am also attaching a copy of my presentation, with one slide added -- it will hopefully show your colleagues what exactly I said. Finally, I should like to share with you and your colleagues a leader page article I wrote for The Hindu on December 5, 2007, on BRT and the need to curb motor vehicle activity and provide for pedestrians and cyclists. This article, which was written in response to the press criticisms of BRT in Delhi, may be accessed at: http://www.hindu.com/2007... Regards, Madhav ****************************** ****************************************** "As for the future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it." Antoine de Saint-Exupery Madhav G. Badami, PhD School of Urban Planning and McGill School of Environment McGill University Macdonald-Harrington Building 815 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal, QC, H3A 2K6, Canada URLs: www.mcgill.ca/urbanplanning www.mcgill.ca/mse Will see how to attach his presentation later. Muralidhar Rao
Muralidhar Rao
tsubba's picture

prof badami

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great updates folks. illa sagar, it is perhaps like vedanta. it is the gory truth but very very difficult to live by. sri nice little intro to PO. i believe england went aggressive on its north shore drilling and within a decade or so exhausted their share. from net exporter to net importer they became. norway, which shared the other half has decided to slow down and preserve. venezeula is on a fast clip to decline i believe. do post your article. start a new thread. we are so insulated by dilli-walas setting the price that ... murali sir,tumba thanks for that update and for sharing that clarification with us. I am happy that you felt that sense of belongingness and put in word about us. :) about his response itself, as the prof said we should have interpolated that his position would be more nuanced than what the media reported. no contest about his clarification itself. but i read his article in the hindu with great interest and have a few notes. will get back. btw thanks for those links. i did google him and look him up. browsed through a few of his publications even. :)
s_yajaman's picture

Up your alley isn't it?

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 Murali sir -  thanks for the clarification and the publicity. 

Tarle - amazing that you actually saw/heard Kunstler in person.  He has been at the forefront of attacking suburbia and all the ills (as far he is concerned at least) that it has brought - a car based society, long commutes.  he in fact predicts the demise of suburbia as oil prices shoot up (again his prediction) and global warming becomes a reality. 

What are the dominating themes as far as urban planning goes?  How does one move these ideas from discussion and concepts to concrete policies?  Bogota seems a striking example of doing so?  What are the other success stories where a dramatic shift has taken place?  What mechanisms were used to do so?  If disclosing any of his compromises your disseration, then of course you don't have to share any data.  Buut if there are any data that you can share it would be helpful. 

I will write to some of the contributors at theoildrum to see if they can post something at Praja.  It is important, IMO, for people to realize that there are limits to how much oil there is and why we need to use what we have left wisely.  

Srivathsa

Drive safe.  It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.

tsubba's picture

sri

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ayyo no, not my day job. good qs. might be importnt to figure out. get back later. do write.
murali772's picture

2nd lecture by Dr Badami

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Yesterday, I had attended second and final lecture by Professor Madhav Badami on "The Public Transit Challenge: Reconciling Coverage, Viability and Affordability" at The Centre for Public Policy, IIMB. This was followed by a film show on BRTS. During the interaction, Dr Badami admitted that BRTS is feasible only along wide corridors, or corridors that can be widened, or when incorporated at the planning stage itself in new layouts. And, his suggestion was to have regular/ shuttle bus services operating in areas, with not so wide roads, feeding into these. Can't disagree with that, though, I would still go by my recommendation as at http://bangalore.praja.in......
Muralidhar Rao

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