Solutions to Change

Image source: LiveMint By Devika P V, The term ‘congestion pricing’ is used to describe a distance, area or cordon-based road user charging policy around congested areas to reduce the use of private vehicles and increase the use of public transportation. Congestion pricing is also known as electronic road pricing. Drivers usually ignore the social costs of using the road and only calculate their benefits which result in traffic congestion and air pollution. Singapore was the first country to implement Congestion pricing in 1975, followed by London in 2003 and Stockholm in 2007. The need for congestion pricing is increasing every year due to many reasons, the main being population growth which affects the number of vehicles on the roads and causes delays, air pollution and increased fuel consumption. While the number of vehicles is increasing, the size of the roads remains the same. As of now, Delhi is considered to be the highly congested state followed by Mumbai, Bangalore a

Image source: topgear.com By Jacob Thamarappally, India is set to move further towards an automobile industry that is primarily electricity powered. The government has introduced certain initiatives in an effort to reduce the carbon footprint in India’s mobility scenario by 2030 and electric vehicles (EVs) are seen to be pivotal to these plans. With schemes like the National Electric Mobility Mission Plan (NEMMP) and the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME), the government has set lofty targets that if realised would result in a significant increase in the number of EVs on roads in India. Currently, India is aiming for 30 per cent of all vehicles on the road to be electric by 2030. As reported by Autocar India, in the FY2019, the number of EV sales reached a total of 7,59,600 units. However, this is a small fraction of the more than 252 million registered vehicles on Indian roads as on 2017. And with an annual growth rate of 9.48 per cent (for 2016