Retrofitting solutions for Guwahati’s transport woes

 The Urban Mobility Conference and Exhibition 2024 held at Gandhinagar in Gujarat discussed in threadbare the standardisation and optimisation of urban transport solutions in India, which have great significance for Guwahati. Efforts to improve urban mobility in the state capital have largely been focused on the introduction of green public buses to curb vehicular pollution and infrastructural solutions like the construction of flyovers. Increasing the share of high-capacity public transport systems like city buses is critical to reducing the share of private mobility solutions and bringing down traffic load. The mere introduction of new buses without creating room for their smooth operation is not a sustainable solution, as it only adds some more large vehicles onto the already crowded roads. If buses are unable to reduce travel time between stoppages, then it cannot become a preferred mode of transport for commuters, particularly during peak hours. Availability of quality data on timing and frequency of buses preferred by passengers for different routes is essential for meticulous planning on deployment of the fleet of city buses to optimise its services. The introduction of new buses has not done away with the unscientific practice of deploying most buses on the same route and all buses stopping at each stoppage along the same route. The prevailing practice of every city bus stopping at every stoppage results in congestion due to five to six buses arriving at the same stoppage at the same time. The arrival of multiple buses at the same point simultaneously results in an ugly tug-of-war among the buses to get the maximum share of passengers already waiting. The buses continue to wait for longer durations to get some more passengers, which adds to traffic congestion. Besides, honking by other vehicles that get stuck behind the buses aggravates the vehicular noise pollution. Improving bus service efficiency requires fixing of different stoppages for buses plying on different routes while passing through the same stretches common to all these routes. When stoppages of different routes are displayed against different route numbers, then passengers will wait at a definite stoppage to travel to their destination along a particular route and will not expect buses plying on other routes to stop at the same point. Cooperation of passengers is crucial to making changes in bus stoppages and fixing different stop points for different routes. Shifting the bus stops away from confluence points of different roads is to be strictly implemented to prevent traffic congestion but has been ignored by bus operators and not enforced effectively by the traffic police administration. Behavioural changes among passengers are also necessary to help the administration enforce the norms. If passengers stop waiting at points other than designated stoppages, then buses will also be compelled to prevent the practice of random halts. Construction of bus sheds by Guwahati Municipal Corporations needs to be followed up with strict enforcement to make buses stop exactly at the stop point and not on the carriageway, blocking movement of other vehicles. Buses stopping at stop points and giving way to buses of other routes and different stoppages, as well as other vehicles moving in the same lane, is critical to reducing traffic congestion. Unfortunately, most buses wait far away from the bus shed, compelling the passengers to come out and walk to the vehicle lane to board buses, sometimes at the risk of being hit by two-wheelers plying on the left-hand side of the bus. Rationalisation of bus routes to connect different nooks and corners of the city is an issue that dominates the public discourse on urban transport improvement. Reflection of this discourse in policy intervention is still absent even though the city has expanded horizontally and many new roads have been constructed to connect the new settlements. The city is also growing vertically at a faster pace in these new settlements, which implies the exponential rise in the demand for mobility solutions. In the absence of efficient public transport covered by city buses, a rapid increase in private mobility solutions is quite natural. The resultant effect of faster growth of private mobility solutions in areas not adequately connected by bus service is that new vehicles are also getting added to the main city roads with people travelling to these areas from their settlements on the periphery for different work. Planning for improving urban mobility in the city cannot remain disconnected from such new realities. Neglecting the issue of planned introduction of bus services and other modes of public transport providing connectivity in new localities will only extend the deficiencies in urban mobility gripping the central areas of the city to these new areas. Guwahati desperately needs multiple retrofitting solutions to improve the efficiency of city bus services and make innovative urban mobility solutions like the introduction of a new fleet of buses, such as green buses with engines powered by batteries or compressed natural gases, truly sustainable.