India wants better transport to cut emission levels: Montek

India is working on a policy that will encourage the biggest cities and towns to build up their public transport systems as an alternative to cars to curb emissions in the country's polluted urban areas.

"We clearly want to move into a much stronger system of public transport in order to avoid excessive dependence on individualised forms of transport, which are both energy-using and emission-generating," Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Planning Commision deputy chairman, said in New Delhi today.

New Delhi, which started a local train network in 2002, had 5.14 million registered vehicles as on March 31, 2007, or more than the combined number in the three biggest cities of Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. It was also the first city to make clean-burning fuels such as gas mandatory, in 2000, for commercial vehicles. Still, pollution levels in Delhi last year were almost as high as those before 2000.

The world's most-populous country after China, India needs to build transportation systems as more of its people move from villages to cities. In 2001, 27.8 per cent of the population lived in urban centres, compared with 19.9 per cent in 1971, according to the government's census data.

Automakers like Suzuki Motor, General Motors and Renault SA are spending more than $6 billion to expand in India, where economic growth may help car sales triple in the next eight years.

India will be the fastest-growing auto manufacturer among the world's top 20 car-making countries, New York-based accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP says.

Cities such as Delhi are expanding public transportation networks to cater to more people. The Delhi Metro Rail Corp, started in 2002, now covers 65.1 kilometers and is aiming to extend that to 180 kilometers by 2010.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday that the government will announce its national plan of action on climate change in June and that he has also asked the Planning Commission to prepare a policy on public transportation.

India is concerned that global warming will flood coastal areas, melt glaciers in the Himalayan mountain range and raise temperatures, reducing food output.

Worldwide temperatures are likely to rise 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius during this century, driven by human emissions of heat-trapping gases, a United Nations panel of scientists said last year.

Such warming is causing Arctic ice to melt, rain to decline in parts of Africa, and sea levels to rise, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said.

India, Asia's third-biggest economy, is the world's fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, according to the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report 2007-2008. Between 1990 and 2004, emissions increased by 97 per cent, one of the fastest rates of increase in the world, the report said.