Sustainable Urban Transport Indicators: Case of Mega Cities of India

Abstract

The modern urban economies, in struggle to keep up with the pace of economic growth are suffering from issues of sustainability in transportation, imposing huge costs on the economy. Major reasons for the unsustainability in transportations can be listed as, a) issue of accessibility, b) lack of efficiency and c) diminishing air quality. This paper tries to evaluate these issues for megacities of India from dimensional principles of sustainability. The paper tried to evaluate the indicators of sustainability by adopting the famous three-dimensional principles to the major mega cities of the country. The findings from this paper are quite interesting to note that, the major mega cities are suffering from unsustainable transport system. To have a deeper look, Bengaluru, emerging mega city of Karnataka, is analysed by bringing new dimension called, institutional sustainability . By evaluating, economic, social, environmental and institutional sustainability with relevant benchmarks, the result showed that, in all respect mega cities of India and more specifically, Bengaluru city is experiencing unsustainable growth of transport sector which needs urgent attention of the policy makers.