How ready are Indian cities for non-motorized transport?
Twenty eight cities in India, spanning 19 states, participated in an assessment to review the strengths and gaps of local governments in terms of their policy, capacity, resources and awareness towards non-motorized transport (NMT) projects, as well as their willingness to implement non-motorized projects in their cities. This large scale, year long assessment, undertaken by ICLEI South Asia in partnership with Innovative Transport Solutions and the Indian Heritage Cities network, was supported by the Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation. A group of national mobility experts, led by the Urban Transport department of the Ministry of Urban Development, and the Institute of Urban Transport, advised the assessment process at different stages.
In order to most effectively capture the breadth of information required for accurately assessing the status of cities’ readiness to implement NMT, a simple, yet comprehensive excel-based tool was developed. To ensure that all aspects are captured in a comprehensive and structured manner, the tool covered a series of questions divided into 5 ‘E’s: engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation. Each ‘E’ in turn contained questions pertaining to planning, policy, institutions, financials and implementation. The performance of each city with regard to the questions under these categories formed the basis of the assessment.
This year along assessment exercise culminated in an exhaustive set of findings and recommendations at the national, state and local government level.
These findings and recommendations are now available in this comprehensive report: Ecomobility Readiness Assessment and at ecomobility-sa.org