Moving on, second on the list of cities with highest car density is Kolkata, which has 308 cars/km of road. Pune came in third with 248 cars/km. Interestingly, Delhi's car density is only 93/Km, though it has the most number of private cars; 27.9 lakh, to be precise.
Mumbai, on the other hand, has 8.6 lakh private cars, which consequently obstruct the expansion of public transport - an issue prevalent throughout India. Mumbai currently has 1.64 lakh public vehicles and a density of 82 vehicles/km of road. And with cars becoming increasingly accessible, traffic and other relevant issues are bound to be aggravated.
Ashok Datar of the Mumbai Environmental Social Network said, "Public transport can never grow unless we remove cars parked on the road at least on major arteries. About 20% road space is used for car parking." Rishi Aggarwal, Mumbai Transport Forum co-convener, suggests the government must support and strengthen aggregator AC buses, which will allow significant amount of space to be freed up on the roads.
Other than that, another pertinent issue is pollution. Both, noise and air pollution severely affect the quality of life in metros and with such numbers, it is important that government take initiatives to control the number of private cars and encourage public transport in cities.
(Source: ETAuto)
