THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 07 August 2019 (The bus to better transport (The Hindu))

The bus to better transport (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Improving bus transport system in India

Context

• The great cities of the world use one guiding principle in planning services for residents and visitors: working with finite space.
• In big cities, new roads are not possible, and no new land is available.
• But they must prepare to serve more and more people who arrive each year. Successful plans build better mobility.

Congestion Problem

• When cities fail at mobility, the result is congestion, lost productivity, worsening pollution and a terrible quality of life.
• India’s big cities have all these attributes, and 14 of them were in the list of the 15 most polluted cities worldwide last year.
• Congestion in the four biggest metros causes annual economic losses of over $22 billion, the NITI Aayog says in its Transforming Mobility report.

Not enough buses in India

• The bus to urban transport ecology that the executive in-charge of technology and customer satisfaction at Transport for London.
• Indian cities need to add several thousand buses more, and not just spend heavily on Metro rail.
• There are over 1.7 million buses in India, about 10% of them operated by governments. Individual cities don’t have enough of them to provide a good service, and the gap is filled mostly by unregulated intermediates, such as vans.
• The buses operated by governments are not properly designed, are uncomfortable and badly maintained.
• Government corporations do a poor job when it comes to using technology.

Lack of information

• One of the key barriers to taking a bus is not getting information about the service; bus corporations deprive themselves too, of revenue, by failing to act on this.
• Cities such as London and Singapore have systems to tell passengers where the next bus is on a route and predict its arrival at a stop in real time.
• Such a system is not available for even the biggest metro cities in India, something the Smart City mission could have addressed.

Way forward

• Buses need an image makeover and cities need several thousand more buses, of good design and build quality.
• They need to use contact-less fare payments using suitable cards, since buying tickets is also a barrier.
• Buses also need support to move faster through city traffic, using policy tools such as congestion pricing for cars.
• The biggest reform that the U.K. experience teaches is integration. Bringing traffic authorities, road engineers and transport operators under the same umbrella worked wonders in London to eliminate planning and operational problems.
• Indian cities have unified Metropolitan Transport Authorities to do that.
• They must be brought to life and given mandatory targets.
• The goal should be a stipulated higher share of travel by public transport, walking and cycling, and this should be evaluated through periodic surveys of customer satisfaction.

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  General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With reference to the Quick Reaction Surface-to-Air Missile (QRSAM), consider the following statements:
1. It has a strike range of about 1000 km, is capable of killing multiple aerial targets, tanks and bunkers.
2. The missile has been indigenously developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
A. 1 only
B. 2 only
C. Both
D. None

Answer: B
Mains Questions:
Q.1) What are the steps needed to upgradation of buses in public transport system?