As West Bengal gears up for elections, a group of urban mobility experts in West Bengal have proposed a charter for enhancing the transport system in three crucial cities of the state.
A collective of civil society organisations under the canopy of Sustainable Mobility Network, have released an Urban Mobility Charter by the Sustainable Mobility Network suggesting at least 60 buses per lakh population for the City of Joy.
The charter by mobility experts from organisations, including SwitchON Foundation, Kolkata Cycle Samaj, Kolkata Bus-o-Pedia Foundation, and Asar along with The Climate Thinker, outlines feasible, time-bound mobility priorities in the state’s two most urbanised centres: Kolkata Asansol and Durgapur. The charter highlights mobility priorities for these centres across four issue areas ~ better public transport, safe streets, clean mobility, and gender-inclusive transport and is intended as a non-partisan roadmap to support improved access, public health, and economic productivity.
According to Vinay Jaju, founding director of EarthON Foundation, air quality, climate resilience, and everyday mobility are deeply interconnected across West Bengal’s cities. “Strengthening public transport systems, especially buses, and accelerating the shift to cleaner vehicles are practical steps that can deliver visible public health and socio-economic benefits within the next few years,” pointed out Mr Jaju.
The experts have advised at least 60 buses per lakh population with low floors, ramps, automatic doors, emergency buttons, and bus stops within a five-minute walk for all residents of Kolkata. The charter also recommends consideration of fare support for women in public buses across the state, following states like Karnataka, where over 20 per cent of the women in Bengaluru and Hubli-Dharwad saw employment gains because of the Shakti scheme. Even in the cities of Kolkata and Durgapur, 28 and 25 per cent of women, respectively, said they would switch to buses if such a scheme were introduced. As reiterated by the experts, around 60 to 70 per cent of trips taken in Kolkata and Asansol are less than 4 km, indicating that improved walking and cycling infrastructure would benefit large sections of the population while promoting sustainable, active mobility.
The experts have also recommended continuous, well-designed footpaths covering 100 percent of the road network in these centres. Reallocation of select on-street parking spaces in core areas toward walking and cycling infrastructure is also one of the suggestions in the charter.
Given that buses and auto-rickshaws account for almost one-third of the PM2.5 and PM10 emissions from transport in Kolkata, the expert asserted encouragement of sustainable options of transport for the cities. According to the mobility experts, West Bengal lags in adoption of electric vehicles, with EVs comprising only 1.5 per cent of all vehicles in the state ~ the lowest among the five most populous states in India. Considering the claim, the experts have advised a green tax on polluting vehicles in these centres, incentives for newly acquired buses, light commercial vehicles, auto-rickshaws, two-wheelers, and fleet vehicles to be electric and a charging point for every 20 electric vehicles.