Despite taking several technology measures to curb pollution from vehicles, vehicular pollution has emerged as the top polluter in the capital city of Delhi. Explosive motorization, choking congestion and inadequate public transport services are undercutting the emission gains from technology measures in the transport sector of the city.
This has emerged from the new analysis by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) that has shown how even after implementing the largest ever CNG programme for the public transport and local commercial transport, phasing out of 10-year-old diesel and 15-year-old petrol vehicles, restrictions on entry of non-destined trucks, introduction of Bharat Stage 6 emissions standards, and onset of the fleet electrification, vehicles are still the key polluter due to the growing mobility crisis.
In view of this, CSE has assessed the factors that are responsible for the growing mobility crisis and congestion woes that are contributing to the toxic pollution build up. CSE has carried out a deep dive analysis of the current trends in particulate matter pollution, trend in motorisation, congestion impacts, and the state of public transport to understand this growing challenge.
This analysis has been done based on the:
(i) Publicly available granular real time data from the CPCB’s official online portal Central Control Room for Air Quality Management. The data has been captured from 37 official stations under the Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring System (CAAQMS) spread across Delhi.
(ii) Dynamic estimation of real-time data on source contribution by the Decision Support System for Air Quality Management of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) to assess the real-time trend in the relative contribution of different sources of pollution.
(iii) Farm fire counts from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) and contributions from farm stubble fires to Delhi’s air quality, as estimated by the Ministry of Earth Science’s SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research).
(iv) Traffic speed in the city based on Google Maps API data- a measure of congestion during early winters (September 15 –October 29, 2024) on 25 road stretches of key roads in Delhi and relate it with the pollution trends.
(v) Congestion and productivity loss-based congestion data from Google API has been calculated based on State’s labor law department figures.
(vi) Year-wise registered city bus fleet trend based on Socio Economic Report for various years
(vii) Bus and metro accessibility analysis using geographical information system (GIS), based on the ward-wise population and station locations.
(viii) Ridership trends analysis of DTDC and Cluster buses based on GNCTD Economic Survey of Delhi.
(ix) Comparative analysis of journey cost of public transport vs. private transport based on primary data collected by CSE.
