Congestion on Delhi roads is growing at 7 per cent annually according to the assessment of green body Center for Science and Environment (CSE) and experts believe that, if it not addressed immediately, Delhi will merely run to stand still. "This is an inevitable consequence of explosive and unrestrained vehicle numbers that have crossed the mark of 10 million in 2017. The numbers are further inflated by daily influx of vehicles from outside Delhi. With a further drop in car prices under GST, car congestion will only grow," says Anumita Roychowdhury, Executive Director CSE.
CSE report on traffic congestion further elaborated that in Capital, the average traffic speed on 13 arterial roads is 50-60 per cent lower than their design speed and 35-48 per cent lower than the regulated speed of 40-50 km per hour. "Air pollution increases with congestion. When average morning peak hour speed of 28 Kilometre per hour (kmph) drops to 25 (kmph) during evening peak, nitrogen dioxide levels increase by 38 per cent," assessment quoted.
The CSE assessment report points out that even after building so many roads (22 per cent of Delhi's geographical area), Delhi's battle against pollution, congestion and energy-guzzling is getting increasingly more difficult. "This is undercutting the city's efforts to control emissions and toxic exposures in all sectors," said the environment activist.
"If strategies are not changed to curb motorisation to reverse this trend, it will become increasingly more difficult to reduce high toxic exposure, crippling congestion and loss of productive time," she added.
The Google map based traffic assessment concluded that average speed is significantly lower than the designed speed of the arterial roads as well as the regulated speed. "The 13 selected arterial roads have been designed to achieve a driving speed of 50-70 kmph as per UTTIPEC's (Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure (Planning and Engineering) Centre) street design guidelines as well as Indian Road Congress guidelines for urban roads. The regulated speed is 40-55 kmph. The actual observed average peak speed on these roads now is 26 kmph and off-peak is 27 kmph which is 50-60 per cent lower than the design speed," as per the observation made by CSE.
Quoting the vulnerable roads of Delhi, CSE report states that from Ambedkar Nagar to lajpat Nagar on lal Bahadur Shastri Marg, the average morning and evening peak speed noted are 16 kmph and 17 kmph respectively. "Speed can even drop to 5 kmph during evening hours. On Sri Aurobindo Marg from lado Sarai to Kidwai Nagar West, the average speed is 19 kmph that during the worst peak hours between 6-7 pm during; weekends can experience an hourly speed of 7 kmph."