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Blog Posts: Urban Mobility

  • EVConnect Journey: Five insights on e-vehicle adoption in India

    In August 2018, WRI India launched its first edition of a monthly newsletter on electric mobility, ‘EVConnect’. It was clear that although electric vehicles’ sales and growth in charging infrastructure was embryonic and sporadic, its ecosystem had the potential to benefit Indian cities and states, which warranted further exploration. Electric vehicles provide a host of benefits such as curbing tailpipe emissions from vehicles, the ability to store renewable energy in vehicle batteries and reduced foreign oil imports, to name a...

  • India Has the Worst Road Safety Record in the World. A New Law Aims to Change That

    This blog post originally appeared in WRI Insights.

    India’s parliament approved the Motor Vehicles Amendment Bill on July 31, 2019, the result of a five-year effort to improve national legislation on road safety. After the president’s approval, India’s streets may finally become safer places for both pedestrians and drivers.

    Road traffic deaths have reached alarming levels across the world, with...

  • 3 Reasons Raahgiri Has Become India’s Urban Movement

    This blog post originally appeared in TheCityFix.

    In too many cities today we see a stark dichotomy. On one side we have enclaves for the rich and powerful, full of luxuries and amenities, and access to the bounties of a globalized world. On the other, there are the disempowered and poor, slumdwellers, and recent migrants, who lack even the most basic services.

    But we are also seeing new social and political movements to press back against these trends...

  • Can Delhi's Bike Sharing System Help Mainstream Cycling in India?

    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...

  • The Mumbai rail stampede was waiting to happen. Here’s how we can prevent a similar tragedy

    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...

  • How Tactical Urbanism Can Improve Road Safety

    Indian cities are going through a massive change. Decision-makers are rethinking urban design to make public infrastructure more useable and accessible. For instance, public bike share systems in Bhopal and Mysore have changed the way people commute; or the redesigning of streets in Bangalore has created a safe pedestrian network. In other cities like Mumbai, Pune, Bhubaneshwar, and Gurgaon, the public right of way is being reimagined taking pedestrians’ safety standards into account. In many of these cities, WRI India is playing an important role in this transformation.

    ...

  • Unlock Bengaluru: Driving the Next Wave of Urbanisation

    From Bangalore to Bengaluru

    In 1970, Bangalore had 1.6m people. Within the decade, the emergence and expansion of public sector institutions such as the Indian Space Research Organisation, Bharat Electrical Limited, and Hindustan Machine Tools caused a sudden growth spurt, followed quickly by more growth owing to the textile and information technology industries gaining a foothold in the city. By the 1980s, the population was growing at the rate of 45...

  • New Mobility Dialogues: Leveraging Data and Fostering Collaboration

    On 6th April 2017, WRI India Sustainable Cities in partnership with Startup India program of the Government of India convened the New Mobility Dialogues held in New Delhi, as part of Connect Karo 2017. The New Mobility Dialogues brought together existing and aspiring startups, seasoned entrepreneurs, mobility experts and other stakeholders to learn about new initiatives, tools and collaborations in the new mobility ecosystem.

    The sessions included discussions on using commuting data for better decision making in cities, and collaborations between various stakeholders for furthering...

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