Pune ranked India’s 7th most congested city

Pune is the seventh most congested city in India, according to a recent research published under the US-based organisation, National bureau of economic research (NBER). Conducted by a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and three other U.S. universities, the research studies the current status of mobility in urban India, using Google maps.

According to the findings, Bangalore tops the index for most congested city, and Mumbai in the second position, while Pune follows in the seventh place. In another index of traffic speed, Kolkata has been found to be the slowest city, while Pune manages to hold down its position to the 20th place.

Tejaswi Satpute, the deputy commissioner of police (traffic), Pune, said that the probable cause of the ranking can be the limited infrastructure and citizen approach. “There is a lack of proper infrastructure in the city, when it comes to accessing mobility and traffic condition. While the government is making it attempts to fill that gap, there is a big lack of scope for widening infrastructure in the heart of the city, which includes peth areas especially. Congestion is the highest in those areas mostly,” she said.

Satpute added that the traffic department, in order to install their own traffic monitoring system, have tied up with a Dutch-based software company called TomTom NV. Currently on a trial period of 2 months, they plan to propose the civic body and the smart city body, to purchase the software for better monitoring.  Pune ranks as the 7th most congested city in IndiaHALF YOUR LIFE SPENT STUCK IN TRAFFIC - Box (PUNE Metro pg 2; Date: November 09, 2018) - Embed code inline script.

“There are a number of flaws when it comes to monitoring congestion and traffic through apps like Google maps, which is not really on real-time. For instance, Google data is always on a 10 minute lag, while TomTom data refreshes after 5 minutes. Also, both the apps mistake parked vehicles as those stuck in traffic, and considering the huge number of vehicles parked on the streets, the data is not always accurate. We are trying to find a better monitoring system to provide better solutions to congestion,” she added.

In terms of public approach, she added that more number of people in Pune prefer to travel with their own vehicle and not the public transport. Such factors also cause congestion on the roads.

The research paper, ‘Mobility & Congestion in Urban India,’ by Victor Couture of Haas school of business, University of California, Berkeley, Adam Storeygard of Tufts University, Gilles Duranton of Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and Prottoy A. Akbar of  University of Pittsburgh, is the first large-scale analysis of traffic congestion in 154 Indian cities. Using Google maps, the researchers analysed 22 million potential trips throughout the prominent cities of the country.