: Bangladesh, India most at risk from climate change

: Bangladesh, India most at risk from climate change: "Bangladesh and India are the countries most vulnerable to climate change, according to an index on Wednesday that rates the Nordic region least at risk."

TH!NK ABOUT IT - CLIMATE CHANGE - blogging competition

TH!NK ABOUT IT - CLIMATE CHANGE - blogging competition: "The human population has doubled twice in last hundred years. One way of saying that is: in only last 100 years there were 4 times as many humans as compared to the total number of human beings till the beginning of 20th century. If that’s scary, Energy consumption by us is doubling 4 times faster than population growth. Number of automobiles is doubling ten times faster than population growth. I find this aspect of growth somewhat ‘demonic’. Our growth, in many ways, is runaway."

Is Public Transport a drain on cities?

Public Transport activists are often told by the local city administration/government that Public Transport is a big problem as it is a drain on the coffers of the city. "Public Transport loses money and the city can't afford to subsidize it beyond a certain extent.

A big lie, because profit and loss from public transport (transit) can't be worked out from fare (ticket ) collection alone. One must quantify the invisible benefits to the city from a well functioning public transport system. Add up the cost of air, soil and noise pollution on the city and health of its citizens, add up the cost of medication to treat respiratory diseases, hypertension, heart disease and even cancers directly or indirectly connected to automobile effluents. Add up the cost of never-ending road construction, flyovers, underpasses, accidents and stress of driving in congestion primarily caused by personal automobiles. Add to this the cost of building parking lots and other infrastructure for the automobile and you'll begin to see the real cost of automobile dominated city planning.

You will then see how much Public Transport users subsidize the city because public transport vehicles cause far less pollution, contribute far less to road congestion and accidents when compared to personal auto vehicles. If more people use public transit the city will be a much better place to live in.

But people won't get out of their personal auto vehicles unless public transit is economical and unless the city puts in place severe constraints (like expensive parking levies, congestion charging and creation of car-free areas). Free Public Transport can thus become an important step to move in this direction.

Sujit Patwardhan
Pune, India
www.parisar.org

Parisar

Parisar: "Parisar organised a national level round-table “The City and the Metro”, held at Yashada, Pune, on 20th and 21st July 2010. Many cities in India are going in for Metro Rail systems in an attempt to address their transportation problems. Such systems are already in operation in Kolkata and Delhi with other cities in the process of building a metro system. In total, India is expected to invest Rs. 2 lakh crores (40 billion dollars) in Metro rail systems over the next 10 years. Presently a public debate is taking place in the city across a variety of issues about the proposed Metro Rail System being considered for Pune."