Blog Posts: transportation

The ongoing pandemic has wreaked immense and lasting damage to India’s economy, and passenger transport has been particularly affected. Its far-reaching impact on the aviation and railway industry is well-documented, along with the struggles of...

This blog post was originally published in The Hindustan Times.

As per the State of Global Air 2018 report, the country lost 11 lakh people due to air pollution. But, we have still not understood the severity of the issue.

Last Sunday, over 3,000 people turned up in the morning to protest against the growing air pollution in Gurugram. Protests are part of our society, so it was not surprising to see...

India suffers from the highest burden of road crashes, contributing to nearly 10% of global road deaths. In just the last decade (2008-2017), road crashes in India have increased by 23%, with an average annual increase of about 2% every year. The problem is particularly acute in urban areas, which witness nearly 42% of all crashes in the...

Around the start of winter is when the conversation on air pollution in Delhi usually begins. This coincides with two key events – Diwali and crop-burning. The conversation ends around the new year, coinciding with the change in weather. However, pollution is not gone for the rest of the year, as we often think. For example, in 2018, Delhi did not have a single good air quality day. Yes, zero good air quality days out of 365 days!

Therefore, it is not surprising that as per the World...

Government agencies in India are beginning to adopt open innovation as a means to identify innovative technologies and solutions to improve public services. Open innovation refers to partnerships between companies, individuals and public agencies to create innovative products and services and in the process, share its risks and rewards. It is a process borrowed from the private sector and used to accelerate a company or organization’s internal innovation process and yield optimal solutions for a...

The mobility sector in India is undergoing a digital transformation. Public bus agencies, usually referred to as State Road Transport Undertakings (SRTUs), are investing millions in setting up Intelligent Transport Systems to improve the efficiency of bus systems. At the same time, mobility entrepreneurs backed by heavy investments, are developing innovative...

On Sunday, India’s latest bicycle sharing system was launched in New Delhi following on from the successes of Mysore, Bhopal, and other Indian cities, which have helped garner interest in cycling as an alternative mode of commute. The bike share system was launched by Venkaiah Naidu, Vice President of India, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Minister of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change, and Meenakshi Lekhi, Member of Parliament, New Delhi.

Under the Smart Cities initiatives, NDMC launched this bicycle sharing system with SmartBike, a Hyderabad-based company which has teamed up with...

On average, two people die on Mumbai’s roads owing to traffic crashes every day. The city ranks seventh in the country in terms of absolute numbers of road traffic fatalities. Pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists are most vulnerable, and are involved in more than 90 percent of all road traffic fatalities. Young working populations – mostly men – are particularly affected.

Most crash data reports only talk about what happened – the crash itself. However, the political and societal influencers of road...

Inducing a modal shift from private transport to public buses will reduce road traffic deaths in India. In cities such as Bangalore and Mumbai, the city bus agencies – Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) and Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) respectively – account for 20-32 percent of the mode share, but were involved in only 5-13 percent of the road fatalities reported in the city in the last five years. The data suggests that the quantum of crashes per driven...

This piece was originally published on scroll.in.

Friday’s stampede at the Elphinstone Road railway station in Mumbai was a tragedy waiting to happen. I speak from my own horrifying experiences of being stuck in dense queues at Lower Parel and Currey Road stations in midtown Mumbai. Around 30,000-40,000 people alight at Elphinstone Road and Lower Parel during peak hours. The numbers are similar for Dadar, Parel and Currey Road. But the...