Urbanization is leading to insurmountable pressure on public services in India. The country has about 53 metropolitan cities and about 70% or all urban population is distributed in Class 1 cities with population upwards of 100,000 in each. This trend of increasing pressure on urban systems is apparent across the nation.
Our urban transport systems are unable to efficiently support the mobility needs of increasing urban population. The system is dependent on personal mobility vehicles however given the land use land cover situation, expansion of road infrastructure in extremely difficult. The urban mass transport systems need to undergo a complete transformation and come up with innovative mobility strategies. The systems needs to address three key issues – reduce the need to commute, help commute in an efficient way when the need is inevitable, fuel the commute in environmentally responsible way.
The paper is talking about the needs to wake up to its urbanization needs. The country needs to shift to multimodal transportation systems which are seamlessly integrated to each other – for access and for payments.