Would Pune ever need a Metro?

As we all know, Pune badly needs a good, reliable and attractive public transport system.  Pune is considering a Metro and the Metro is frequently talked about as the panacea of all ills of transportation.

But does Pune really need a Metro?  In fact, would Pune ever need a Metro?

Before we go into any technical issues, let us see a rather interesting point of view, which is suggested by Prof Dinesh Mohan of IIT Delhi, a transportation expert.

Growth of cities in medieval and modern times

Cities were the seat of power since medieval times.  The largest city was the capital and the royalty lived there.  The dukes and nawabs also lived in the smaller cities.  Their palaces and administrative offices defined the city centers.  They needed large gardens for leisure.  Roads around places visited by them were showpiece boulevards.

They needed staff to run their offices.  These servants of the state better stayed away from where the royalty stayed.  They lived in suburbs.  The city needed a system to bring them to work quickly every morning and pack them off to their quarters equally quickly every evening.  The servants lived in all directions around the city center.  Therefore all old cities had radial corridors, geography permitting, that need high capacity roads or rail lines.

Times changed, and the royalty was replaced by - well, modern centers of power.  The Members of Parliament worked in the parliament, and top bureaucrats worked in secretariats.  Their plush bungalows and flats were still in city centers.  Clerks and typists couldn’t afford to live there - they lived in suburbs.  Some such cities needed two high capacity local train services - Western and Central railways, for example.  Others needed radial roads like Ganeshkhind, Karve and Satara roads.

And times changed yet again.  A new class of “powerful” people has emerged, though they may not have entirely replaced the center of power.  This class has self-earned money.  This class is “the market”, and the economy depends on its purchasing capacity.  These people don’t work in city centers.  They don’t frequent the museums in the city centers too.  They earn high salaries in small and large companies in several MIDCs around Aurangabad, or IT offices in Hinjewadi or Kharadi or Magarpatta city, or in SEEPZ and Navi Mumbai.  They don’t even need to go to Tulshibag, as long as the nearby mall offers Braun appliances.

Now cities have several satellite centers all over the city and its periphery where people go to work.  The traditional radial corridors do carry a lot of traffic, but there are other roads which carry equal amount of traffic.  The city traffic pattern doesn’t look so much like a “star” any more, it has started looking more like a “mesh”.

Measuring traffic and capacities of systems

Let us now get into some traffic jargon.

Traffic densities are measured in “pphpd” - persons per hour per direction.  Roads like Karve Road carry about 8,000 pphpd in peak hour traffic.  The capacity of a typical 3+3 lane road is considered to be around 10-12,000 pphpd if all lanes can be used for traffic, i.e. if parking is not allowed on such arterial roads.

If road space is used even more efficiently by reserving one or two lanes for buses, and if buses ply at high frequency, the capacity of such roads can be increased to about 15-18,000 pphpd.  This is possible with a well designed BRT system.  In fact, the best BRT systems in the world have achieved throughputs of even around 30,000 pphpd.

Metro system have a much higher capacity than BRT.  They can easily carry 20,000 pphpd, and can even reach 75,000 pphpd.  There is no doubt that a Metro can carry very heavy traffic loads.

The question is, would Pune’s traffic demand on any corridor ever reach such numbers.

Pune’s traffic load: Today and tomorrow

As is seen earlier, Pune traffic is quickly moving from a “star” pattern to a “mesh” pattern.  The arterial roads already carry 8-10,000 pphpd.  However, we increasingly see that orthogonal roads like Senapati Bapat Road, the Bypass Highway are also carrying equivalent load of traffic.

It has also been observed that as cities grow, people tend to either live closer to their jobs or choose jobs closer to their homes.  A person living in Hadapsar now prefers a job in Magarpatta instead of driving every day across the city to Hinjewadi.  As a result, even very large cities seldom have roads that need to carry more than 15,000 pphpd.

What sort of cities need a Metro?

Then, one may ask, what sort of cities have corridors that need to carry, say, 20,000 or more pphpd and hence need a Metro or local trains?  Such cities include-

·         Cities that had geographical restrictions and hence could grow only in one direction, e.g. Mumbai.

·         Cities that have very large population densities - e.g. the daytime density of Manhattan is very high because of the skyscrapers covering every available inch.

·         Cities that could - well - just afford to build a Metro!  London built its Metro when the  English empire was at its peak and the cost of labour as well as cost of disturbing day to day life during construction was small.  Even the local train system in Mumbai was built in first quarter of 20^th century, when most of Mumbai suburbs were sparsely populated.

·         Cities in China are also building Metro systems.  However, their ways of land acquisition and offering compensation to displaced citizens is not something that we Indians would like to adopt.

Will Metro solve our problem anyway?

Metros cost the moon.  Yet, for a moment, let us assume that Pune were able to come up with funds that the proposed Metro needs, and see whether it would solve the public transportation problem, after all!

The total volume of traffic in Pune Metropolitan Region is estimated to be more than about 75 lakh passenger trips per day.  Their actual and desired modal share is roughly as follows:

Mode	Modal share today	Desired modal share
Public transport	12%	50%
Rick-taxi	8%	10%
Personal vehicles	50%	8%
Bicycles	10%	12%
Walking	20%	20%

This implies that public transportation should support about 35-40 lakh trips.  If we assume that the total no of trips to be supported goes to 1 Cr, PT should support about 50 lakh trips.

As per the DPR of Metro, the ridership of Vanaz-Ramwadi corridor is estimated to be 2.9 lakh trips per day optimistically (and 1.4 lakh trips conservatively), which is about 4% of total number of trips.  This ridership could increase to some 4.8 lakh trips (optimistically)  by 2021 and 5.9 lakh trips by 2031.

The Metro would after all carry just 4% of the traffic.  45% trips still need to be supported by a bus based system, which would be PMPML + BRT.

In this connection, it should be noted that the actual ridership of Delhi Metro is less than what was estimated by DMRC.

The cost factor and alternatives

The Vanaz-Ramwadi Metro corridor is expected to cost Rs 2,294 Cr as per 2009 prices.  We all know that then the actual cost could be anywhere between Rs 6,000 to 10,000 Cr when this corridor completes, and yet it will carry only 4% of the traffic.

As against that, the cost to completely revamp PMPML to carry 45% of the city’s traffic would be approximately Rs 2,000 Cr.  This includes 5,000 brand new buses as well as good footpaths and a network of cycle tracks, so that people are provided viable alternatives to using personal vehicles.

Let’s talk about future - real future

A question that is frequently raised is, “the life of a Metro system is easily 100 years.  Won’t Pune need a Metro after 50 years?  Will it be possible to build a Metro that time?”

As seen above, the pphpd needs of traffic corridors today are between 8 to 12,000, and this is for a PMC + PCMC area with a population of about 50 lakhs.  If this population grows to 1 Cr, the pphpd needs will not double, but would be around 15,000 because of increased sprawl of the city.

However, transportation will not be the biggest problem of such a large metropolis!

Remember that today Pune gets about 225 l water per day per person.  If Pune manages to eliminate leakages in its water distribution system and manages within the prescribed quota of 150 l/day/person, it means Pune can still accommodate 50% more population.  That takes us to about 75-80 lakh.

Considering that the state has already used about 90% of the Krishna-Bheema basin water sanctioned to it, and rural Maharashtra doesn’t quite get even the prescribed 40 l/day/person, there is hardly any room for building more dams and using more water for Pune.  So the most acute problem a 1-Cr Pune will face is water shortage, not transportation.

We better stop Pune’s growth beyond 75 lakhs!

With the kind of sprawl Pune has even today, which is likely to increase, a 75-lakh or even 1 Cr Pune can never have traffic corridors that would need to support loads of 20 to 25,000 pphpd that could make a Metro necessary, let alone financially viable.

Pune’s growth to 75-80 lakhs could take about 20 years.  Hopefully, by then wisdom will dawn upon the Powers that Be, and Pune’s population will saturate.  Equally hopefully, that will also be because true economic growth reaches other smaller towns around Pune, and people can earn a decent living while enjoying urban facilities even in cities like Satara, Ahmednagar, even Shirur.

What is the alternative, then?

First of all, Pune should realize that the objective is not to build a Metro, but to build a transportation system where people of all ages and abilities can move around the city.  Considering that roads cannot be widened indefinitely and flyovers cannot be built to out-build the growth in number of vehicles, this transportation system will have to be based on priorities and visions in the following order:

1.      Pedestrians must be able to walk and cross roads safely.

2.      It should be possible to live without depending on a personal vehicle.

3.      If a road is too narrow to accommodate pedestrians and vehicles, generally pedestrians get the priority.

4.      Among vehicles, public transportation vehicles get priority.  If a road is too narrow to accommodate buses and personal vehicles, only buses get to use it.  Buses also get at least one dedicated lane on most roads.  Will it cause traffic jams?  Yes.  Jams are needed for good public transportation!  If you don’t like jams, board a bus!

5.      Pour very attractive, high quality buses in the system.  People should like to use the bus instead of their car.

6.      Bicycles get a priority after pedestrians and buses.  Accidents with bicyclists don’t kill people and bicycles don’t emit pollutants.  Develop a network of cycle tracks.

7.      Encourage rickshaws.  It is a shared vehicle and does not need as much parking space as a car.   A car sits idle for at least 22 hrs a day.

8.      If, and only if more space exists on roads after accommodating pedestrians, buses and cycles, allow personal vehicles to use it (for driving as well as parking).

9.      Personal vehicles must pay for the space they use for parking.  Also charge some 2-5% tax on fuel.  Fund the bus system through parking charges and fuel surcharge.

The whole system should be designed in such a way that walking, using a bus and using a cycle should be more convenient than using a personal vehicle.  Then, and only then, one can live without a personal vehicle in a city, yet commute freely and conveniently.

If you want to travel long distances, your preferred mode would be a bus - maybe a BRT bus.  For shorter distances, use a cycle if you can, or simply walk on the spacious, clean footpaths.  Those who can afford to use a car today can hire a rickshaw instead.  Those who still insist on using a personal vehicle should pay for the space they use for parking as well as for the pollutants they emit that damage the cyclists’ lungs.

- Harshad Abhyankar
(Founder- Save Pune Traffic Movement)