CEE April-June 2012

like economic growth, rising incomes, growth and aging of populations, trade and urbanization have led to the changes in the transport requirements of developing nations. India is no exception to this except higher proportion of young population. Need for better transport is common to all the three strategic agendas for the sustainable development. ADB has estimated that 80 per cent of Asia's new economic growth in future will be contributed by its urban economies, since this where most jobs and employment opportunities are located. Urban population in India is growing at much faster rate than the overall population growth due to unidirectional migration from rural areas to the urban areas. The economic planning of the country focused on the cities is the governing factor for this phenomenon. Experience across the world has been that as economies grow, rapid urbanization takes this proportion to over 60 per cent before it begins to stabilize. India's urban population is expected to grow @ 473 million in 2021 and 820 million in 2051 as against 370 million in 2011. It is notworthy that the major thrust of urbanization is on metropolitan cities with increase in their numbers as well as increase in the average population residing in such cities. Population in urban areas grow at nearly 3 per cent per annum rate whereas vehicular population grows at more than 10 per cent annual rate. The increasing population in cities has created higher demand for travel and also better level of mobility and service quality. Transport supply in the cities has largely remained unmanaged or been informal in absence of comprehensive, continuous and coordinated planning of urban growth. In light of the Sustainable Transport Initiative (STI) taken up by the ADB recently, urban transport has come to the focus particularly for developing countries. Transport systems in Indian cities are captive to the 'congestion' syndrome; be it the roads parking lots or transit vehicles depending on the city size. It is this phenomenon of 'congestion' that is responsible for transport externalities as local as well as global nature. Whereas delays accidents, and SPM cause damage to the local environment, atmospheric pollution through emission of C0 2 and NO. has effect on global environment. National Urban Transport Policy (2006) broadly highlights the issues of urban transport of sustainable development emphasizing for integrated land-use transport planning, promotion of public transport in multimodal environment and equitable allocation of road space. Implementation of these principle policy objectives along with other sub– objectives is indeed a stupendous task and also generates challenges and opportunities of unprecedented scale for Indian researchers in perpetuity. The present article attempts to highlight some of the fundamental issues of research in the fields of urban transportation planning and urban traffic behaviour. Urban transportation: Research challenges Urban areas in India are spread across a wide spectrum of economic base, population, geographical setting, urban form, land us structure and socioeconomic character. Travel demand, therefore, becomes unique as well as multidimensional for different cities. Even though passenger travel predominates the cities, freight movement within the city becomes important factor for traffic management in metro cities or cities with strong industrial base. Experience over the years has shown augmentation of transport supply in terms of wider roads and flyovers to facilitate easier movement of vehicular traffic as supply management strategy with limited and short duration impact on quality of service. In spite of this type of limitation of supply driven strategy, there is hardly any effort made in the direction of demand management. Dynamic nature of the urban system is adding one more dimension to the complex nature of urban travel demand making transportation planning for cities even more challenging. Travel demand estimation: Urban activity pattern is basically governed by the land use structure and urban form. Need for travel arises due to the need to participate in set of activities which are spatially separated. Amount of trips made significantly depends on the land use mix as well as socioeconomic characteristics of the population. Translation of these person trips into vehicular trips; may be motorized or non-motorized; significantly influences the traffic quality on transport corridors of the city. Following are the major areas of research in urban travel demand estimation: • Relationship between economic activities and urban population settlement pattern • Activity pattern modelling for various socio economic segments of the urban population • Effect of spatial urban growth on activity pattern. • Relationship between land use (type & intensity) on trip generation and attraction potential • Impact of activity pattern on choice of travel mode for different socio-economic segments • Impact of transport supply on activity pattern • Impact of quality of transport supply on travel mode and route choice 57