Hi,
"A car(bon) free day" Is this possible in delhi or in Bangalore, & be ready to pay more Life time tax for your second car in karantaka..
Buying second car? Shell out more tax
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Bangalore: Planning to go in for a second car? Then, be prepared for a higher lifetime tax on it than the amount you paid for the first. This is transport minister R Ashok’s solution to ease traffic congestion on Bangalore roads: discourage people from buying a second car though they can afford it.
Speaking to reporters here on Wednesday, Ashok said he was getting the proposal vetted by the law department to stand the scrutiny of courts. A slab system for levying lifetime tax on the second or third car would be worked out and it will be steep, he added. However, the minister did not elaborate whether the proposal will be applied to one car per person or one car per family.
He said BMTC was encouraging IT firms and BPOs to go in for hiring of Volvo buses to transport employees. “We are ready to give more buses or ply them to suit their timings.’’
A car(bon) free day: Time to walk the talk
Imagine walking through the morning rush hour in Delhi and not seeing a single car for miles. Does the picture look a bit incongruous to you? How do you have a city full of people rushing to work and not have cars honking bumper to bumper? Yet it could well be a reality waiting to happen — a car-free city, if only for a day.
But, you might ask, why do it in the first place? Let’s start with the most obvious reason. It can save you money: public transport, even the most luxurious one, is still cheaper than running a car. It can save precious oil — and in turn let the government invest the subsidy it provides car owners to the entire city’s infrastructure. Last year alone, the government subsidized crude oil to the tune of Rs 73,500 crore. As crucially, think of the climatechanging greenhouse gas emissions that you could reduce, simply by reducing your daily carbon footprint.
How many cars are we talking here? Approximately 8.8 million for the entire country at present, estimates the Asian Development Bank. In Delhi alone, there are close to one million cars and more than four million personal vehicles in all.
The Capital adds 1,054 personal vehicles every day on its roads. The pressure is unbearable on public infrastructure and health. Nearly 72% of the pollution load in the Capital comes from vehicles and fumes from cars and other personal vehicles dominate. Road space has increased several-fold in the Capital but the growth in cars has far outpaced it. The road network in Delhi has increased 3.7 times between 1971-72 and 2005-06 but during the same period, the number of vehicles has increased 21 times.
Consequently, cars that carry merely 30% of the population in the country’s capital hog 70% of its road space. Everyone else gets squeezed out.
A single car-free day in a year is not the answer to this city-choking aspiration of a developing economy. But it’s a message that is better spread today rather than tomorrow — mobility does not mean a personal vehicle. One doesn’t need to be impractical about it. Do it in phases. Just like our elections. One portion of the city on one day and another, the next. Make a ripple and you could well start a wave.
The car-free day concept is not merely about limiting traffic in certain streets of the city; it could also enable city dwellers to ‘discover’ alternative and sustainable means of transport. Creating car-free zones is the practical offshoot that many cities across the world are trying now, and with great success.
There are no clear estimates of how much petrol could be saved in the country if each city kept its cars in the garage for a day, but here are some indicators. The World Energy Outlook estimates that the share of transport CO2 emissions from oil within India is around 35%. The transport sector is growing and cars within that are growing faster each year. The share of cars in the overall fleet of vehicles on road will go up from 12% in 2005 to 21% in 2035, claims ADB.
India may not have gorged on the carbon pie quite like the developed countries of the West. But there is no reason why it cannot go on a healthy diet now, rather than wait to fall ill first.