Scientists recently released a report which says we have 12 years to prevent the worst effects of rising temperatures. On the ground, the problem is going in the other direction at a fair clip. Air quality has been deteriorating in India over the past few decades. With India still focussed on creating large-scale manufacturing jobs and relaxing environmental laws this is only slated to get worse. As per a 2011 Cambridge report, more than half a million people die in India prematurely due to pollution and many in urban areas develop serious respiratory illnesses. India has the second highest incidence of premature deaths in the world due to outdoor air pollution. This is happening very quickly too. A recent paper from Tel Aviv University stated that Bengaluru showed the fastest rate of declining air quality in the world in the last decade.
Beyond industrial causes, the contribution of the fossil fuel-based transportation system to bad air quality is not insignificant. In fact, the Ministry of Environment & Forests, India in 2010 found pollution due to motor vehicles is one of the leading causes of deteriorating air quality. Vehicles contribute 42% of the particulate and 67% of nitrogen oxides. The actual exposure levels were found to be, on an average, 3 to 12 times higher than the ambient levels in Bengaluru city. Some points like Peenya in the city counted 1300 micrograms per cubic meter of particulate matter as per a Greenpeace finding in 2015, which was 26 times more dangerous than WHO recommended guidelines. New Delhi has fared far worse in this regard with pollution reaching dangerous levels.
We need to pull the hand brakes now but cities are pumping the accelerator instead. The Transport Department in the Government of Karnataka adds 1600 vehicles to the roads every day. This rate of addition will triple the number of vehicles on the road by 2030 as per the latest Revised Master Plan of the BDA. Road & Vehicle taxes along with property taxes are substantial sources of directly collectable revenue for the state government. No wonder the state governments will want to build on more land and put more vehicles on the road to keep the cash flow going.
Instead of fixing the broken incentives, the answer to addressing air pollution has been to set better tailpipe emission standards. This has been constantly flouted as seen in the Volkswagen diesel vehicle controversy in the US or the fact that 20% of the vehicles tested by the pollution control board in Bengaluru were flouting the already lax Indian emission norms. Chasing internal combustion engines to solve the pollution problem is like getting into negotiations with a hungry tiger to save yourself. It eats meat for food and it doesn't understand your language.
As government Ministers from all over the globe head for the World Health Organisation's first ever international conference on air pollution and health this week, it is important to highlight that cycling and walking have long been a solution that has been staring us in the face. That, combined with mass public transport based on renewables will save the day for populated cities in India and other parts of the world. But in a growing economy, the society has classified the bicycle as an inferior good and walking as something for the poor. In India, talks of cycling and walking are seen as anti-development while the motor vehicle is seen as a symbol of upward mobility. The efficiencies of cycling and walking might be theoretically understood but the political economy finds it outside the Overton window to take action.
Cycling is a state subject and it is important to have the municipal administrations build capacity for action. With inertia in the purchase of bicycles and its usage on a mass scale, public bicycle sharing systems are seen as a catalyst. The hope is that the availability of bicycle as a last mile option will move people to public transport and some more to complete trips on the bicycle. Mid-sized cities like Mysore, Pune, Bhopal, Coimbatore etc have deployed PBS on a small scale. The real change will come when large cities like Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai adopt it in scale. Bengaluru has taken off with about 4500 bicycles on the road. The impact will come when it is 100,000 and covers a broader geographical area. Investments in walking and bicycling infrastructure still remains a distant dream. Some cities produce a few kilometres of walkable footpaths and cycling lanes only to see it abused by motor vehicles very quickly.
The road to change then comes down to the people who are at the receiving end of poor air quality. It's important for them to take cycling from being a radical idea to a popular one in order to effect change. Cycle Day was one such idea thought up 5 years ago. The program recognised that traffic is a collective action problem and needed to be solved as a collective. Since 27th of October, 2013, 35 communities and 400 cycle days have made it the longest running community-led open streets program in the country. It chose the neighbourhood path rather than a central event to catalyse communities to make short trips and introduce equity into their streets. Yet another program launched in Bengaluru on 22 September 2018 on International Car Free day, is the #CycleToWork campaign. It recognised that work commute was a major contributor to air quality issues. It gamified the process to allow groups of people to compete and get their company on a leaderboard. It has already seen 75 companies within a month of launching and moving to other cities nationally and internationally. More such innovative nudges are needed to make large-scale change urgently.
The clock is ticking, and we don't have a planet B. Each person's choice will be the difference between destroying permanently what we have and buying time so our children can fix the mistakes we have made so far.
Abridged version appeared in Hindubusinessline as oped.