Bengaluru: It's an irony. While the government works to decongest the city by building flyovers and the like, more and more vehicles continue to be added to Bengaluru’s roads. Going by the Karnataka transport department, there were six lakh more newly registered vehicles in January 2018 when compared to the same month last year in the city.
While in January 2017 there were 67,22,075 newly registered vehicles, in January 2018, there were 73,07,812 newly registered vehicles. In fact, going by traffic expert, Prof. M N Sreehari, over 4,000 new vehicles are registered every day in the city.
“Given that the city has a 1.22 crore population, people prefer their own transportation to public. Also, today buying a new vehicle is not a big deal. Nearly 75 per cent of the vehicles in the city are two-wheelers, 17 per cent are cars and the rest is public transportation," he adds.
For most people it's all about saving time. Says a daily commuter from Malleswaram, Bindu, “I have to change two or three buses, which means it could take me nearly an hour to go from Malleswaram to Yelahanka. But if I take my two-wheeler , its takes me less than 30 minutes and is more convenient.”
Sunith, a two-wheeler owner, also points out that public transport does not provide proper connectivity to interior localities and rues the absence of last mile connectivity in the city. “In this scenario we are forced to buy new vehicles to travel more conveniently.”
“You have heavy traffic in other cities like Delhi and Mumbai too, but they have the Metro or local trains to help commuters,” notes Seema, who commutes for work from Whitefield to Koramangala.
In Prof. Srihari’s view until the Metro Rail provides last mile connectivity and increases its coaches, the city will continue to lack a proper public transport system. “Once they do this the people will shift to the public mode of transportation. The other solution is to increase the vehicle tax, garage tax, and parking charges. This will help in reducing the traffic congestion and also the number of newly registered vehicles,” he adds.
