CAPF: Mass Transport Systems are the Key to Reducing Fuel Expenditure

Mass Transport Systems are the Key to Reducing Fuel Expenditure

Its well said by Gandhiji that “The Earth provides enough for every man's needs but not every man's greed”, and its our greed over the period of period of time that we are running out of oil reserves, and emitting so much pollution in environment that earth is not able to replenish itself. With increase in quality of life, more and more people are using private vehicles for daily commutation. Thus the congestion, pollution and fuel requirements have risen steeply in metros.  The outcome is environmental degradation. One way to save environmental degradation may be to motivate people to use Mass Transport System (MTS). In MTS, all means of public transport i.e. bus, train and subways works in a integrated way, so as to make users journey convenient and time efficient.

MTS comes with multi-dimensional advantages. For one, they decongest the roads. With more and more urban migration for jobs, the urban centres are dealing with population boom, and when they come on roads with private vehicles, the whole traffic gets paralysed. The horrifying night in Gurugram in 2016, cannot be forgotten by residents, where, it took 8-10 hours to cover distance of 2-4kms. People had to spend the night in their vehicle on the road.

Further, Mass transport will reduce demand for fuel. India is already importing fuel to meets its growing demands, but, if MTS is adopted by people in cities, India can reduce its expenditure on fuel imports and use the same money to run development schemes for poor.  The other advantage is environmental impact due to combustion of petroleum products. Resulting in increase in CO2 and contributing to global warming and thus climate change.

For people, opting for MTS may be useful as, they wont have to maintain private vehicles and run for parking here and there. But, even though larger objective favour for MTS but, motivating people to shift towards MTS is very difficult. As for congestion to get clear, people feel more comfortable in waiting in their own vehicle rather than public transport. Moreover, the cities like Delhi should work towards such system switching modes should be easier and should provide last mile connectivity to user’s destination, thus saving individual cost of fuel consumption and countries spending on fuel imports.