Although the responsibility for management of urban areas (and thus urban transport) rests with the State governments, a Central policy is considered necessary as:

Several key agencies that would play an important role in urban transport planning work under the Central government, with no accountability to the State government

Several Acts and Rules, which have important implications in dealing with urban transport issues, are administered by the Central Government

A need exists to guide State level action plans within an overall framework.

The launching of the NURM has provided a timely platform for providing significant financial support from the Central Government for investments in urban transport infrastructure. As such, this offers an opportunity for a meaningful national policy that would guide Central financial assistance towards improving urban mobility.

A need exists to build capacity for urban transport planning as also develop it as a professional practice.

A need exists to take up coordinated capacity building, research and information dissemination to raise the overall level of awareness and skills.

The objectives of this policy would be achieved through a multi-pronged approach that would revolve around the measures highlighted in the previous section. These are further elaborated in the sections that follow.

Cities in India vary considerably in terms of their population, area, urban form, topography, economic activities, income levels, growth constraints, etc. Accordingly, the design of the transport system will have to depend on these city specific features. Further, transport planning is intrinsically linked to land use planning and both need to be developed together in a manner that serves the entire population and yet minimizes travel needs. In short, an integrated master plan needs to internalize the features of sustainable transport systems. In developing such plans, attention should also be paid to channel the future growth of a city around a preplanned transport network rather than develop a transport system after uncontrolled sprawl has taken place. Transport plans should, therefore, enable a city to take an urban form that best suits the geographical constraints of its location and also one that best supports the key social and economic activities of its residents. Unfortunately, however, transport planning has not received the extent of attention it should have in drawing up strategic development and land use plans.

The Government of India would, therefore, promote the development of such integrated land use and transport plans for all cities. To enable this, all urban development and planning bodies in the States would be required to have in house transport planners as well as representation from transport authorities in their managements. The Government of India would extend support for the preparation of such integrated land use and transport plans, to the extent of 50% of the cost involved in developing such plans, provided the city also demonstrates its willingness to act in accordance with them. In order to create models for possible learning and replication, the Government of India would fully support pilot studies in a few sample cities, of different characteristics and in different regions of the country. As part of this exercise, each city would also be encouraged to identify potential corridors for future development and then establish a transport system that would encourage growth around itself. For example, radial corridors emerging from the city and extending up to 20-30 kms could be reserved for future development. Such corridors would have to be protected from encroachment by putting up physical barriers along such reserved corridors and physically constructing roads on short stretches even before settlements come up. This would imply that stretches of the corridor would come up first in order to guide the location of the settlements and not allow undue sprawl to take place.

A scheme already exists under which the Central Government provides partial financial support for traffic and transport studies in cities. This would be modified to enhance the extent of Central Government support and also make these studies more broad based to integrate transport planning with land use planning, keeping projected populations in mind.

At present, road space gets allocated to whichever vehicle occupies it first. The focus is, therefore, the vehicle and not people. The result is that a bus carrying 40 people is allocated only two and a half times the road space that is allocated to a car carrying only one or two persons. In this process, the lower income groups have, effectively, ended up paying, in terms of higher travel time and higher travel costs, for the disproportionate space allocated to personal vehicles. Users of nonmotorized modes have tended to be squeezed out of the roads on account of serious threats to their safety. If the focus of the principles of road space allocation were to be the people, then much more space would need to be allocated to public transport systems than is allocated at present.

The Central Government would, therefore, encourage measures that allocate road space on a more equitable basis, with people as its focus. This can be achieved by reserving lanes and corridors exclusively for public transport and non-motorized modes of travel. Similarly lanes could be reserved for vehicles that carry more than three persons (popularly known as High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes). Past experience has been that such reserved lanes are not Is this the congestion problem everywhere??!! 7 respected by motorists and therefore lose meaning. In order to facilitate better enforcement of such lane discipline, suitable provisions would be introduced in the Motor Vehicles Act and other instrumentalities to enable stringent penalties for violation.