Commute-related pollution: Kolkata shines among megacities

Commute-related pollution: Kolkata shines among megacities

News:

1. The report titled ‘The Urban Commute and How it Contributes to Pollution and Energy’, compiled by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) was released recently.

Important facts:

• Fourteen cities including six mega cities and eight metropolises evaluated by the CSE for emission of greenhouse gases such as particulate matter and nitrogen oxides.
• Six megacities -Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
• Eight metropolitan cities-Bhopal, Lucknow, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Pune, Kochi and Vijayawada were evaluated.
• According to CSE, air pollution was a national crisis and road transport was the sector showing the highest increase in emission of greenhouse gases.

2. The report pointed out the following facts:

• Delhi fare at the bottom of the table in terms of pollution and energy use.
• Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai fared a little better than Delhi.
• Chennai was the first city to adopt a non-motorised transport(NMT) policy in 2004 that aims to arrest the decline of walking or cycling by creating a network of footpaths, bicycle tracks and greenways.
• Bhopal emerges as the lowest polluter.
• In terms of overall emissions and energy consumption, Bhopal was followed by Vijayawada, Chandigarh and Lucknow.
• The report places Kolkata as the top-performing megacity despite population growth and rising travel demand.
• Kolkata able to contain motorsiation with a well established public transport culture, compact city design, high street density and restricted availability of land for roads and parking.
• The report compares Kolkata to Hong Kong and cities in Japan.
• Smaller cities such as Ahmedabad and Pune ranked below Kolkata for overall emissions.
• Mumbai, had the highest GDP but a lower rate of motorization compared with other megacities .
• Metropolitan cities scored better than megacities due to lower population, lower travel volume and lower vehicle numbers.

3. Approaches followed for ranking:

• The cities were ranked based on calculations of heat trapping (CO2).
• The study took following two approaches to rank the cities:-

4. Based on overall emission and energy consumption.

5. Per person trip emissions and energy consumption.