This was an amusing piece of news from this Monday where a corporator suggested imposing a London-style ‘pay-to-drive’ plan for South Mumbai in India.
India has 4x the population of the US, sitting on 1/3rd the land mass! Take a second to let that sink in.
The absolutely obvious solution for mass transportation must be world-class public transport, not a push for more automobiles. Yet the population of vehicles has increased over 60% in the past 10 years!
Solutions like ‘pay-to-drive’ or vehicle ownership taxes work well in Manhattan, London, or Singapore because they’re part of a holistic understanding of the city, the population that moves, at what times, on which days, and the availability of adequate and efficient public transport as an alternative.
It gets messy when ill-informed leaders start proposing solutions based on their limited perspective.
A few years ago, I had written to the Indian Minister of Road Transport and Highways highlighting exactly this concern. The lakhs of crores being spent on highways and roads, while enough to make any countryman proud just to hear the staggering budget, is in reality creating a much bigger problem for the short-to-medium term.
Consider the evidence: roads built to ease traffic get jammed within 1-2 years of construction. That doesn’t sound like a planned build.
The local railway system running at 2-3x the maximum capacity and still falling short. Commuters risking their lives standing on the non-platform side just to grab a ride to work each morning. Regular deaths on the tracks.
Remember the video doing the rounds a few days ago about the design of a luxury train here? The compartment door opened right onto the exit, posing a huge risk to passengers.
And we obviously can’t forget the lakhs who risk their lives every single day, commuting in still door-less trains in 2026.
This is gross apathy on the part of those in charge.
For real change, for starters, if metropolitan cities can build truly world-class public transport systems, and have buses or small, 2-4 wheel individual and shared taxi-type rides for last mile connectivity from the stations and bus stops, the traffic problem will very likely solve itself.
My old letter to the Minister: https://shrutinshetty.com/2021/02/21/life-is-a-highway/