Vehicles entering Delhi from other states add up to its pollution woes, acc-ording to a report released by the CSE.
Vehicles entering Delhi from other states add up to its pollution woes, acc-ording to a report released by the CSE.
The CSE analysis showed that the number of vehicles entering the national capital from other states every day is close to the total number of vehicles that are registered in the city annually.
A real-time cross-border traffic survey by the CSE said personal and passenger vehicles from outside the city account for 22 per cent of the total particulate load that is not only undercutting pollution control efforts in Delhi, but also making enormous demand for land for parking facilities.
“Delhi’s battle against pollution, congestion and energy guzzling can get increasingly more difficult if its own explosive motorisation gets further aggravated by the huge daily influx of vehicles from outside. An equal numbers of vehicles are going out of Delhi daily contributing to pollution in the NCR towns as well,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, the CSE head of sustainable urbanisation programme.
“This new analysis reconfirms that ineffective public policy on public transport connectivity is increasing dependence on personal vehicles, leading to enormous pollution and ill-health in Delhi-NCR.”
The city is a “pollution highway” for cars, the CSE said, adding diesel fuel use is still high in Delhi as the total number of diesel cars, taxis and SUVs entering the national capital daily are also 2.5 times the diesel vehicles registered in Delhi during 2014-15.
The CSE claimed that instead of scaling up public transport connectivity in the NCR aggressively, both the Centre and state governments are planning to turn city roads into highways and elevated corridors to induce more personal vehicle travel across Delhi.
The CSE survey at nine entry points shows that around 3.07 lakh cars and 1.27 lakh two-wheelers enter Delhi daily. If this is taken as the 70 per cent of the total traffic from all 124 entry points, then the total number of cars, SUVs and two-wheelers from all entry points can be as much as 5.65 lakh.
