[Anikesh11]

While older diesel cars need to be phased out, we also need to target a reduction in the overall number of cars in our cities. There is an urgent need to ramp up bus services in all our cities, plus suburban railway services in Mumbai needs improvement. Public transportation is the answer to almost half of our urban issues. Cars have the potential to kill the livability of a city

[Hayek]

Yet another example of clueless judicial activism. The fact is that public transport in Bombay is unusable - our local trains are insanely crowded, still not air conditioned and designed only for the lowest common denominator. No upper middle class person could imagine traveling in them.

The metro lines are years away from completion - and cover only small parts of the city - so I don’t see them as a viable alternative to cars for most of the population. So the entire idea of banning cars or restricting them makes no sense whatsoever for anyone with the slightest clue about how most working professionals live.

Banning diesel cars in cities may make sense over a period of time. But petrol cars do not have materially higher emissions than CNG - and banning petrol cars would be an insane move. Further, any such ban has to be phased in - and not implemented in a manner which steals the property of those who have bought legal products in the recent past. That was the flaw with the 10 year diesel car ban in Delhi - it amounted to an illegal taking of private property - made legal solely because it was implemented by the Supreme Court (which as a leading lawyer friend of mine says, “is not final because it is always right - but always has to be obeyed because it is final”).

So my views:

1) Any ban or restriction on cars in Bombay given the lousy public transport we have is just a recipe to get more upper middle class folks to leave the city
2) Bans on diesel cars may make sense - but must be phased in - starting with bans on over 15 year old cars, which can reduce to 10 years for new cars sold after the ban is implemented
3) CNG is not a viable option for those who need to travel long distances - and hence petrol cars cannot be banned. A ban on 15 year old petrols could be considered. And banning hybrids makes no sense.

[Kosfactor]

Originally Posted by Hayek

. The fact is that public transport in Bombay is unusable - our local trains are insanely crowded, still not air conditioned and designed only for the lowest common denominator. No upper middle class person could imagine traveling in them.
.

This is what I felt too, I think the system was designed for an industrial/ manufacturing type city. It's not that such people don't deserve comforts but I think it perhaps isn't their biggest worry.

[touring_spirit]

Originally Posted by Bhodrolok

Good!

Clearly not only the people in NCR need to breathe, vehicles are a major source of pollution for cities like Bombay & Bangalore. I hope we get a plan for phasing out old diesel vehicles soon and a plan for petrol vehicles too in the next decade or so

The idea like you rightly mention should be to ban older diesel vehicles which had been launched before say BS4. But the news doing the rounds is a blanket ban of diesels, which shows a lack of understanding how emission norms work. It also shows the lack of understanding on how vehicle maintenance plays a part in increase in emissions.

[shimoo]

Originally Posted by SavoyWalrus

No way this is happening in the next two decades. The automobile lobby is strong, and there are many manufacturers in Maharashtra, providing so much employment. Any state government will not allow it. Who's to say there are enough resources to power electric and CNG cars if we solely depend on them.

The auto lobby will love this. This will mean many will be forced to buy new cars. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually end up pushing for it!

[gururajrv]

Well, nothing surprising! I've to mentally prepared and accept when Bangalore implements a lame rule like this in the coming years. I dont know if it's a targeted attack only on diesel vehicles as if they're #1 factor contributing for pollution!

[Ays7]

I think the ban will come sooner than later. Do I think it is a good idea? No. Do I think it will happen anyways - a big Yes. As Pollution levels slowly increase, government will look for easy targets and scapegoats to show that something is being done.

Number of Households that own a four wheeler in Mumbai is lesser compared to other metro cities due to public transport. They are a smaller, fragmented group and are not a meaningful votebank. Besides, even if the older diesel cars are well maintained, they are not nearly as clean as new BS VI engines. To me they will be an easy target and a ban will come on them sooner than you'd think.

[Col Mehta]

With all these talks of banning/phasing out diesel, Skoda India is considering bringing diesel back to its line up after five years.

https://www.autocarindia.com/car-new...-diesel-434231

Team BHP thread link:

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/india...ml#post5912437 (Rumour: Skoda could bring back diesel engines in India with next-gen Superb)

[.HEM]

I had a 1995 W124 E220 Petrol Manual, the PUC certificate gave a clean chit. The pollution emitted by a 25 year old Mercedes Benz was lesser than a 5 year old Maruti Swift. It was a time when we were compiling about the blanket ban implemented in Delhi. The guys who suggest the ban, and those who implement it does not know an iota of automobiles.

[DicKy]

Stealing from Gen Z slang, the milords should really go out and touch grass sometime.

Judiciary is supposed to interpret the law, settles disputes and administers justice to all citizens. Not judicial overreach. They could have taken up various other issues pertaining to Mumbai, but nope. Ban petrol and diesel cars. That is what they came up with.

The construction boom will go on for another decade and half. Thats a given. So maybe time the milords start dicatating the construction firms on how to minimise dust, but then we know how strong the construction lobby is. Even if all vehicles stop running tomorrow, the construction activities are enough to keep the current pollution levels high. There are a hundred different problems to be solved starting from waste management to simple footpath designs to soil retention within cities. But nope, ban cars when there should have been proper facilities to test the road worthiness/fitness of the vehicles. Regarding public transport, I can't understand why Mumbai doesn't have a proper successful metro system unlike other cities, when in fact it is Mumbai that should be prime contender for metro in the first place. Anyways, am sure that once the dust is settled, Mumbai will have proper modern public transport up and running.

Originally Posted by Col Mehta

With all these talks of banning/phasing out diesel, Skoda India is considering bringing diesel back to its line up after five years.

https://www.autocarindia.com/car-new...-diesel-434231

Team BHP thread link:

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/india...ml#post5912437 (Rumour: Skoda could bring back diesel engines in India with next-gen Superb)

Not sure if diesels will help in RDE or CAFE norms, but VAG really does need diesel for their sales.

[AZ911]

This is a very successful money making template of NCR. First they start public infra construction that does not follow any "green constructions" rules, roads dug up, dust everywhere. This is then followed up by a blame game that tries to throw everyone off from the real reasons leading up to the mess. Once that is established into the news etc., this is followed by speculations of car ban. Then they give some time for the people to absorb it, bicker online, file some petitions - basically, to gauge how the wider audience is behaving. Then they establish that mostly it's the middle class that's perturbed as the rich don't care, poor don't care and aren't even troubled by the sarkari machinery. Then they do the money money policy rollout. This is then followed by random blame gaming to keep the rule in place and divert people into random directions.

We need to either live with this BS or relocate elsewhere. No other option.

[antz.bin]

GDP Growth is slowing down. Something needs to be done to pick it up!

What better to make lakhs of people spend lakhs of rupees just to be able to comfortably commute in the city. Le govt. be like:



The best way to stop all this nonsense is to go electric.

No Supreme court can take away your zero emissions vehicle in 10/15 years
No GRAP restrictions
Very little GST income to the govt.
No road tax to the govt.
If you feel the manufacturer is minting too much money off of you on the EV transaction (Hyundai is), just invest in their stock, you make some of that money back.

Thankfully, there are finally some reasonably priced options available in the market (Delhi/NCR was not this lucky). And I am sure 10-12 years from now, a cottage industry will mushroom all over India upgrading all those 19/24/30 kWh Tiagos / Nexons to 50-80 kWh for reasonable amounts of money and we will all live happily ever after.

The air will still be polluted unfortunately that ship has sailed so that we cannot escape. Unless we leave the country for good.

[krrisdrive]

Judiciary overreach or not, somebody need to bell the cat (pollution) and good that Judiciary has started the rumblings. However, true to the Indian nature, instead of defining the problem statement, they jumped right in to solution statement. I sincerely hope that MH Govt shall include IIT Bombay in the expert panel for this study.

Recently came across this article which very much explains our journey of Air Pollution control.
https://www.theplankmag.com/toxic-air-truth

But what I wanted to truly look beyond these headlines is - What is the true root cause of this and the other headline of "No parking No Car".
1. Urbanization is good
2. Population density is good
3. Think about vertical movement (lifts) rather than horizontal movement

These statements are true, but up to a certain point after which everything just breaks. I think we should start creating new livable cities at par with Mumbai/Delhi/Bangalore.

Another pet peeve of mine is the references of global cities we provide to prove a point. I used to do the same but stopped after thinking about below.
1. India is the most populous country
2. India has high level of wealth inequality
3. India is the fastest growing country
4. India is the largest democracy in the world

I bet, none of the countries (developed as well as developing) have the same attributes as above, especially when they were/are in growing phase. Hence, we need to have unique solution to our unique problems. Isomorphic mimicry won't bring results.

It is another problem that we are not creating institutions to address the problem in our unique way. The academic resource pool (IIT/IIM/Countless other institutions) is not yet utilized to form/strengthen our approach to resolve problems through scientific rigor is the lack of imagination from our political overlords. It is better to stop my rant here to maintain the sanity of this forum.

[d_payne]

Originally Posted by Lalvaz

A recent Dec 2023 study shows the contributors to Mumbai's air pollution as below. Now if the Mumbai high court is really serious about reducing air pollution in the city, they need to focus on the major contributor, which is construction.

I'm willing to bet my entire life savings that they will do nothing to stop construction. Just like Delhi's GRAP does nothing to reduce air pollution in Delhi, so also pollution won't go down in Mumbai even if they ban all ICE vehicles.

Thank god. I was hoping someone in the thread would point this out.
I wish our bureaucrats and politicians shared these level of insights to put some relevance to these kind of rules.

And even then, scrap the vehicles/engines that truly pollute - vehicular emissions should be split between commercial, public, and civilian transport.

[mayuresh]

Many posts have brought the issue of the pollution caused by construction activity to the fore.

I am sure many of us would have had first hand exposure and experience of the extent of this type of pollution - particularly if it is happening right where you live and hope to spend most of the peaceful hours of the day.

Constant presence of smog, a feeling of irritation in the throat, accumulation of sticky substance in the ears, nose, similar accumulation on the trees around, even fallen leaves from the trees carrying a layer that looks like building material dust - all these are worrying signs.

Wonder if there are any PUC norms at all on the construction activities. Are they not supposed to cover the area such that the dust does not spread around? There is some machinery relentlessly running making loud noise. Not only that it adds to sound pollution, the fuel type used for such construction machinery and the pollution by burning it is totally unchecked. I mean why isn't there a systematically strengthening BS-whatever norm for those machines, just like vehicles?

It is easy to take up the ban on diesel vehicles despite the systematic strengthening of emission standards over time and cross checks like pollution certification etc. being in place. Who will put in place norms for builders on the other hand? If you have the misfortune of living around a construction site I am sure you know that the extent of construction site pollution is way much severe than vehicular pollution.

I doubt if PUC norms at all exist for construction and if they indeed do in some corner of some rule book, there seems to be no way to implement them.

What norms or rules exist in other countries for construction activities, that are worth adopting for India? How do they go about imposing those?