Good News & Bad News

This presents the evidence of change in Indian cities – however small they may seem today. This captures actual policy decision and action in cities for clean air, public transport, walking and cycling, intermediate public transport, and car restraint initiatives like parking and fiscal measures. The challenge now is to learn from these experiences and to upscale the practices so that we can have the great leapfrog – move from cars to no cars, from pollution to clean air.

There is also the ‘Bad News’ — cities are still mindlessly curtailing walking and cycling, designing cities for cars and hurting public transport users and adding to pollution, ill health and energy crisis. — Kolkata bans cycling; Ahmedabad steps back on cycle track; Delhi is obsessive about flyovers, Mumbai is lost on ill designed unsafe skywalks while neglecting its walk access……

While we are fully conscious that there are many challenges, barriers and gloom of inaction adding to mobility crisis in our cities, we are also convinced that we can move forward if we incentivise change – however small and new it may be. This book helps us to understand the direction of change, what works and what does not. Future action based on this lesson can make mobility work for the poor and the rich