Have we ever considered how much our car costs the city? Just think of the roads that need to be expanded, to fill the ever-exploding numbers of vehicles in our city. Delhi has put as much as 23% of its land under roads and wants to build more to keep up with the ever-growing bulge on its roads. But the city is fighting a losing battle, as road space per vehicle has actually decreased, not increased. Bangalore and all other cities are learning that they will have to make roads over the graveyards of their trees.
But this is only one part of the unaccounted cost of our cars - add everything from land for petrol pumps to electricity for traffic lights, cost of traffic policing, the space for parking and the crippling costs of air pollution on our bodies - and you will find the car and the city are a match made in hell.
Take roads. We know that cars on roads are like the proverbial cup that always fills up. When more roads fail to solve the problem, governments invest in flyovers and elevated highways. These roads occupy space - real estate - and are costly to build and maintain.
But this investment is not paying off either as ever-increasing cars fill the ever-increasing space. This is why experts say building roads to fit cars is like trying to put out a fire with petrol. Britain's orbital motorway, akin to Delhi's Ring Road, was built 20 years ago. Since then, it has been expanded at huge costs to 12 lanes. But bumper-to-bumper traffic on it has dubbed it the nation's biggest car park.
Congestion costs the earth, in terms of lost hours spent in traffic, fuel and pollution. In the US, the congestion bill for 85 cities came to a staggering $63 billion in 2003. This calculated only the cost of hours lost - 3.7 billion - and extra fuel consumed, not the loss of opportunity because of missed meetings and other such factors. Bangkok estimates it loses 6% of its economic production due to traffic congestion. These costs do not even begin to account for pollution: emissions of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide are linked with speed and frequent stop and start.
Cars do not only cost on the road. They also cost when they are parked. Personal vehicles stay parked roughly 90% of the time; the land they occupy costs real estate. Cars occupy more space for parking than what we need to work in our office: 23sq metres to park a car, against 15sqm to park a desk. Cars in Delhi take up roughly 11% of the urban area when parked, same as green spaces do.
Today, cities have a virtual war on their hands to park the vehicles. The answers are not easy to find, as all cities have grown without first accounting for the expensive land that will need to be set aside for parking vehicles. The multi-level parking lots, planned for cities to take care of the menace, are expensive to build.
Car owners do not want to pay the price. So, the only option, city planners have is to dig below green areas. This is "free space", they say. Yet another cost of the car to the city - gobbling up children's playgrounds and adding to the health crisis of obesity.
The question of who should pay is simple: the user. But what is often not understood is the nature of the 'real' user of the public largesse in our economies. While in the Western world the car has replaced the bus or bicycle, in our world it has only marginalized its space. Therefore, even in a rich city like Delhi, cars and two wheelers carry less than 20% of the city's commuting passengers but take up 90% of the road space.
The rest commute by buses, bicycles or simply walk to work. So, the cost is for the car to pay or not pay.
Ultimately, the issue is not even what it costs. The issue is why are we not computing the costs or estimating its losses. Let's understand, if the city is the loser, then we cannot gain.
The author is director of Centre for Science & Environment
