“Promoting Low Carbon Transport in India” Expert Workshop on Indicators for Sustainable Transport
August 29, 2011 Hotel Fortune Landmark, Ahmedabad
1
Workshop Report As per the work package 1, task 1.4, CEPT University’s Centre for Urban Equity (CUE) organised a one day workshop on August 29, 2011, of the stakeholders to hold discussion on indicators of sustainable transport. The stakeholders include the project partners and other experts working on the sustainable transport. The workshop’s objectives were to get expert opinion beyond what exists within the three partner institutions, namely, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD) and CUE of the CEPT University. The project partners had prepared a list of indicators, as per the format agreed to, which covered the economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainability. IIMA, had prepared a list of indicators to address the macro dimensions of sustainable transport. IITD had prepared a list of indicators for city level sustainable transport to which CUE added indicators as well as dimensions of inclusiveness. Two documents, ‘Questionnaire for Macro Level Indicators’ and ‘Questionnaire for City Level Indicators’, were prepared before the workshop and circulated to the invitees and other experts in the sector. Some of the invitees who could not come had sent in their comments on the indicators. Others raised their issues and suggestions during the workshop. The workshop agenda is at the end as Annexure A. Prof. Darshini Mahadevia, Membersecretary CUE and Professor at Faculty of Planning and Public Policy, CEPT University, welcomed the participants to the workshop. Dr. Subash Dhar introduced the project to the workshop participants and then laid out the objectives of the workshop. Dr. Rogat put before the participants ideas about the indicators of sustainable transport and added that the indicators have to be simple and measurable. Technical Session 1: Macro Indicators The technical session 1 was about macro indicators of sustainable transport. Prof. P.R. Shukla of IIMA, in his presentation of the macro indicators suggested an approach of back-casting to reach sustainable low carbon mobility framework, which would give options on infrastructure, space design, technologies and behavioural aspect, which would give decisions to meet national level socio-economic objectives and achieve global commitments of climate change targets. Prof. Shukla presented the indicators in four broad groups; (i) economic, (ii) social, (iii) environmental and (iv) meta (strategic) indicators. The lists of indicators proposed are given in the presentations uploaded. Prof. Darshini Mahadevia of CUE, CEPT University, suggested that there would be a need to add the indicators related to urbanisation level and rate, urban settlement policy, urban land policy, urban employment structure, financing of transport infrastructure by the national government and in particular financing of infrastructure for non-motorized transport (NMT), and fiscal instruments, to bring in the inclusiveness as well as socio-economic dimensions to the macro indicators. The policy making on transport is a state government subject in India and that macro level indicators will have to be sensitive to differences in state level policies.
2
The discussion on the macro indicators included the following issues: i) In general, it was felt that there were too many indicators and that there was also an overlap among them. It was therefore necessary to get a minimum set of important indicators, for which any of the known statistical methods could be used, for example, principal component analysis, etc. ii) An issue was raised with regards to leaving out the indicators whose influence were coming from outside the transport sector, such as indicator of food security. iii) At the macro level, there was a need to bring in indicators related to rural transport and the rural-urban linkage issues. iv) Transport sector is also important for employment purposes and employment in transport should also be included as a separate indicator in the set of social indicators. v) An issue of whether climate implications would be examined from only CO2 emissions or other Green House Gases would also be included in the methodology was mentioned. vi) In the indicators on urbanisation, it had become important to include the indicators on Special Economic Zone (SEZ), as it looked like SEZs were becoming the driver of national urbanization process. vii) There was also a mention of including health indicators at the national level given that transport systems have strong impact on health status. viii) There was a suggestion to include employment as economic indicator and not as a social indicator. Indeed, the choice of category for an indicator is related to the framework behind an indicator. Hence, strictly following the framework of categorisation such as economic, social and environmental might be misleading. ix) There was a need to re-categorize the indicators in terms of policy response, performance and outcome indicators. Another way of categorising them was input, process and outcome indicators. x) The 12th Plan urban transport action plan was heavily biased in favour of metros and that this indicator exercise and the project should feed into this policy making exercise xi) It was important to understand that the city size variability would bring in entirely different patterns of CO2 emissions. It was necessary to bring this reality into the macro modelling. Currently, the macro modelling included only a broad picture of urbanisation and any guidance on disaggregated picture would be useful for the modelling exercise. Technical Session 2: City Level Indicators The technical session 2 was on city level indicators of transport. Prof. Geetam Tiwari presented a framework for the same. She presented the indicators in the following groups: (i) mobility and accessibility indictors, (ii) environmental indicators, which are related to fuel use, (iii) pressure indicators and (iv) response (policy) indicators. She stated the indicators could also be divided into the following groups: (i) city level, (ii) intermediate impacts level, which would include generalised cost of travel and infrastructure availability and quality, (iii) user related, which would capture information on modal choice for each travel purpose and (iv) fuel efficiency related (or environmental) indicators. Following Prof. Tiwari’s presentation, Rutul Joshi added discussion on inclusiveness in urban transport. He stated that 3
levels of accessibility are very different for low income groups and in different size classes of urban centres and that the low income groups prefer to live near their work place to ensure accessibility. But, where the low income groups would stay is contingent upon non-transport aspects such as land use policy and shelter policy. At the same time, the poor are ‘no choice users’ of a transport mode and that the task of any transport planning has to be to convert them into choice users. In this session, the discussion points were: i) It was necessary to decide whether the benchmarks for the indicators were to be specified or not with the indicators. There were two opinions on this issue. One opinion was that when the benchmarks are fixed, it pre-judges and assigns a particular value to any indicator. On the other hand, without benchmarks, there was a danger of missing out the needs of the vulnerable population. At the city level, the Ministry of Urban Development has already worked out benchmarks, a document that is available on its website. This document has given ranges for benchmark rather than on particular benchmark. ii) At this point, the benchmarks for the macro level indicators were also brought in. For example, there are well established benchmarks for CO2 emissions. iii) There was a need to identify the users of the indicators’ exercise so that the indicators can be targeted accordingly. iv) It was necessary to understand that compact cities, or high density cities were necessary for low carbon cities but beyond a limit of density, cities would not remain liveable and hence that has to be kept in mind while evolving an indicator of urban structure. v) The poor are no choice users of a transport mode and to convert them into choice users, there have to be indicators that would capture the quality of infrastructure. Similar dilemma is for higher income groups wherein they are forced to use motorised transport, especially cars in cities such as Melbourne, which cuts into family welfare. For them also, there is a need to convert a situation of no choice into choice of mode. Land use planning related indicators can cover this aspect. vi) Indicators of design of streets also need to be brought in because for the use of NMT as well as inclusive planning would require that some issues are addressed through design interventions, as it is being attempted in Delhi. Even safety aspect, for example that of the pedestrians on a footpath could form part of the street design and we can develop indicators related to design for the safety of pedestrians. vii) The streets should be safe for women to walk. Street lighting, presence of other activities on the streets such as vending, brings a notion of safety and these should form part of the indicators on safety. viii) Safety is equally important for the children and the aged. Hence, safe footpaths to walk for both these groups are also important. This can be included in the indicator of foot path design. ix) The NMT infrastructure, including footpaths have to be unobstructed and clean for increasing their usage. There should be an indicator that captures this aspect. x) It was suggested that distance travelled depends upon land use mix and balance, which can be measured through entropy index.
4
xi) There is also an important aspect of time taken in inter-modal switch, which has to be minimum and convenient to encourage commuters to shift from private to public transport, wherever necessary. xii) Management issues are equally important. For example, integrated ticketing system for different modes has to be introduced to increase the convenience of taking public transit. With management, there have to be enforcement issues and institutional issues. Would these be considered for indicators purpose or not is a question. xiii) Low Carbon Mobility Plan (LCMP) should pay attention to the question of displacements caused by transport projects. Rapid expansion of even public transit systems has caused large displacements and on the social count, such an approach to transport planning is not sustainable. xiv) Another set of indicators in the environmental part could be thermal density at junctions. xv) The key issue in indicators is their measurement. But, measurability should not alone guide the decision about selection of indicators. Otherwise, only measurable indicators would be measured and would not capture all the dimensions of sustainability of transport. It is essential that the project would generate data on the indicators which are finalised. xvi) Lastly, the indicators to be used for the preparation of LCMP and also assessing the case studies should be related to a framework of sustainability. The effort should not be to prepare a laundry list of indicators. Working Groups’ Session The last session meant for putting together the set of indicators was conducted as working group session. The participants were divided into two groups, one to discuss and finalise the macro level indicators and other to do the same with regards to city level indicators. The draft lists of indicators were discussed by the two working groups. The indicators have been finalised and would be available on the project website in due course of time. In the end, Dr. Subash Dhar gave a short presentation on way forward to the next workshop to be held in October, 2011.
5
Annexure A: Agenda Time 9.30 to 10.00 10.00 to 10.45 10.00 to 10.05 10.05 to 10.15 10.15 to 10.30 10.30 to 10.45 10.45 to 11.15 11.15 to 12.45 11.15 to 11.35 11.35 to 11.45 11.45 to 12.45 12.45 to 13.30 13.30 to 15.30 13.30 to 13.50 13.50 to 14.05
14.05 to 15.30 15.30 to 16.00 16.00 to 17.00 16.00 to 16.30 16.30 to 17.00
Theme Registration & Tea Inaugural Welcome Workshop objectives Indicators for Sustainable Transport Discussion Tea Break Session I – Indicators at Macro Level Macro Indicators of Sustainable Low Carbon Transport Inclusiveness at Macro Level Discussion & Expert Inputs Lunch Session II - Indicators at City Level City level Indicators of Sustainable Transport Indicators of Inclusive Transport at City level Discussion & Expert Inputs Tea Break Conclusion Putting Together the Final List of Indicators Next Steps • Indicator application at national level • Delhi Workshop
6
Speakers
Prof. Darshini Mahadevia Dr. Subash Dhar Dr. Jorge Rogat
Prof. P. R. Shukla & Prof. Prem Pangotra, IIMA Prof. Darshini Mahadevia
Prof. Geetam Tiwari, TRIPPS, IITD Prof. Darshini Mahadevia and Rutul Joshi, CUE, CEPT University
Facilitated Rogat
by
Dr. Subash Dhar Prof P R Shukla
Dr.
Jorge
Annexure B: Participants List #
Name
Organisation
Contact Details
Email
CENTRAL ROAD RESEARCH INSTITUTE (CRRI) EMBARQ - WRI
+91-11-26848917
[email protected]
+91-9868453595
[email protected]
BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY CUE, CEPT University
+91-9712682172
[email protected]
+91-9724393659
[email protected]
+45-46775135
[email protected]
1
Dr. Kirti Bhandari
2
Amit Bhatt
3
Vatsal Bhatt
4
Mr. Abhijit Datey
5
Dr. Subash Dhar
UNEP Risoe Centre on Energy
6
Chhavi Dhingra
Sustainable Urban Transport Project (SUTP)
+91-11477 73546
[email protected]
7
Ravi Gadepalli
ITRANS
+91-11-26581765
[email protected]
8
Mr. Sandeep Gandhi
SG Associates
+91-9811081711
[email protected]
9
Ms. Deepty Jain
+91-7503039959
[email protected]
10
Mr. Jaehyun Jang
Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme UNCRD
+81-52-561-9536
[email protected]
11
Ms. Renana Jhabwala
Self Employed Women’s Association
12
Prof. Rutul Joshi
CUE, CEPT University
+91-79-26302470
[email protected]
13
Dr. R. R. Kalaga
IIT, New Delhi
+91-9891252635
[email protected]
14
Mr. Christopher Kost
15
Prof. Darshini Mahadevia
Institute of Transportation and Development Policy, ITDP CUE, CEPT University
16
Ms. Shivika Mittal
IIM, Ahmedabad
[email protected]
[email protected]
+91-79-26302470
[email protected] [email protected]
7
17
Prof. Dinesh Mohan
IIT, New Delhi
+91-11- 26591147
[email protected]
18
Mr. Talat Munshi
CEPT University
+91-79-26302470
[email protected]
19
Dr. Valsala C Nair
Wilbur Smith
+91-9686625270
[email protected]
20
Jamie Osborne
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
+91-9022568329
[email protected]
21
Prof. Prem Pangotra
IIM, Ahmedabad
+91-79-66324833
[email protected]
22
Ms. Tejal Patel
CUE, CEPT University
+91-9898034366
[email protected]
23
Mr. Tejas Patel
CUE, CEPT University
+91-9898618063
[email protected]
24
Dr. Jorge Rogat
UNEP Risø Centre
+45-4632 2288
[email protected]
25
Ms. Trishita Roy
IIM, Ahmedabad
+91-9375323978
[email protected]
26
Prof. Ambuj Sagar
IIT, New Delhi
+91-9871746644
[email protected]
27
Dr. H S Sudhira
Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS)
+91-80-41137705
[email protected]
28
Prof. P.R. Shukla
IIM, Ahmedabad
+91-79-66324827
[email protected]
29
Prof. Geetam Tiwari
IIT, New Delhi
+91-11-26858703
[email protected]
30
Mr. Parth Vaidya
IIM, Ahmedabad
31
Mr. Somesh Sharma
IIM, Ahmedabad
[email protected] +91-9925150375
8
[email protected]