National level round table meeting brings cities and MOUD together to discuss NMT

02 June 2013

 

The round-table that took place on 28 May 2013 in New Delhi, as culminating event of the Ecomobility Readiness Assessment project, was the opportunity to bring together as many as thirteen city representatives from around the country, partner organizations, and key officials from the Ministry of Urban Development, the Andhra Pradesh Municipal Development Project and the UTTIPEC, Delhi to discuss the results of the project and, how to mainstream Non Motorised Transport (NMT) among Indian Cities.

The project studied 28 cities across India for their ‘readiness’ or ‘preparedness’ to tackle the issue of non motorized transport in their cities in a structured manner. The study found that all cities showed a readiness of score less than 50%, which meant that they all had considerable gaps in their approach towards NMT. The cities of Hyderabad, Rajkot and Lucknow were the relatively better performing, or ‘more ready’ cities. Some of the other findings included that on average, the state capitals assessed showed greater readiness than non-capitals, owing to the presence of greater numbers of resources within capital cities. The general trend also indicated that, barring a few examples, readiness improved with an increase in city population; thus the larger cities were more likely to be more ready than the smaller cities. This outcome of the study was especially telling, as NMT users are in higher proportion in smaller cities, but have considerably fewer facilities available to them.

 

During the workshop, the project team presented the approach, methodology and findings, ending with an outline of the proposed recommendations at the city, state and national level for promoting NMT. The participants then deliberated over the recommendations, the issue of addressing NMT in their cities, and shared some of their own observations and experiences from their local contexts.

Mr S K Lohia, OSD (UT), MOUD and chair of the meeting, stressed the need to learn from successful examples to develop and adopt guidelines at the local level for NMT projects and implementation. Hailing the study as an important assessment of cities, Mr Lohia stated “What gets budgeted, gets executed. We need separate budget heads at the local level for public transport and NMT”. He also highlighted the issue of capacity building of city level officials, through training institutes such as the IUT. Most importantly, he mentioned that the MOUD is working towards the preparation of a new law, the Urban Mobility Law.

The interactive discussion between Mr Lohia and the city representatives present led to the identification of several key issues, including the lack of capacity and expertise in NMT at the state and city level, and the consequent need for capacity building and training institutes focusing on the issues of urban transport and NMT, and the need to integrate NMT into each city’s master planning process and to increase community awareness as well as build political will. The lack of clear policies for NMT in cities, was also identified as a factor contributing to its low-priority status in Indian cities.

The project team will finalize the recommendations drawing from the feedback from the discussions and submit the final report to the MOUD for consideration.

For more information, please visit ecomobility-sa.iclei.org.

 

Read more about the project activities so far.

 

National level round table meeting brings cities and MOUD together to discuss NMT
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