With 2,448 vehicles per kilometre of road, Kolkata has the highest vehicular density of all Indian metros, according to data provided by the state transport department and the Kolkata Police.
The finding gives objectivity to what many Kolkatans already know: with more traffic snarls now, commutes within the city are taking longer than ever.
Average trip time in the city, in fact, has doubled in the last five years, in keeping with a sharp rise in the number of personal vehicles and a decline in public transport, mainly owing to the pandemic. Kolkata now has around 45.3 lakh vehicles plying on 1,850km of road space. Delhi, which has substantially more vehicles (1 crore 32 lakh), has 33,198km of roads, giving it a vehicular density of less than 400 per kilometre.
Kolkata’s vehicular growth has largely been driven by personalised vehicles, especially during the pandemic. There are 6.5 lakh two-wheelers and 10.7 lakh four-wheelers registered in the city proper (areas under Kolkata Police). This growth coincided with the weakening of public transport, as reported by TOI earlier. The public bus system has yet to recover from the body blow it suffered during the pandemic.
“Vehicular density in Kolkata is the highest among Indian metros,” said a senior cop supervising the traffic department. He underlined the necessity for robust public transport, especially the restoration of the bus system, along with the Metro, to reduce pressure on carriageways.
Data for the study on vehicular density came from two sources: the vehicular count from the state transport department till December 31, 2021; car count across cities — and vehicular density calculation — from data sourced by Kolkata Police from the police of those cities.
The majority of Kolkata’s 1,850km-long total road length is two-laned. Experts said the city needed six-lane roads to accommodate the current volume of vehicles. Kolkata currently has no six-lane road. A few stretches — E M Bypass, Red Road-Kidderpore Road and stretches of J L Nehru Road-SP Mukherjee Road — are four-lane. “Thus, most roads in the city have exceeded saturation level,” said an officer of the Bengal Traffic-Transportation Planning Directorate.
“This is a problem in all big Indian cities,” said Ranjit Gadgil, a transport expert from Parisar, an advocacy grow up for sustainable mobility. “The day is not far when walking takes you faster to your destination than a car or bus,” he added.
The problem with personalised vehicles is the low passenger count per vehicle. Moreover, parking of personal vehicles eats into carriageways, shrinking road space. “People prefer to park on the road as parking fees in the city are among the lowest in the world,” said Ajay Das, former chief of traffic and transportation engineer, Bengal.
Cars saw a steep rise during the pandemic. Between March 2020 and May 2022, as many as 78,102 cars were added to the city’s fleet. “The fear of catching Covid overrode the cost-benefit rationale in purchasing a car. In a city like Kolkata, we need more mass transit systems like buses, which facilitate the dispersal of a large volume of commuters. More cars mean more congestion and pollution,” said Sharif Qamar, associate director, transport and urban governance, TERI.
