Pollution-hit Delhi to ban drivers on alternate days

The Delhi government has announced a plan to curb its choking pollution levels, among the worst in the world, by limiting drivers to alternative days beginning next month.

From 1 January, residents in India’s capital city, which had been suffocating under a blanket of smog in recent days, will only be able to drive on alternate days based on their licence plate number; odd numbers on one day, even on the other.

The plan, likely to be controversial, was announced after a Delhi high court issued a directive last Thursday ordering the state and national government as well as Delhi’s pollution control committee to devise a plan to address rising air pollution levels by 21 December. “It seems like we are living in a gas chamber,” the court said.

Delhi’s air – a noxious combination of exhaust, dust, smoke from wood and dung-fired stoves, burning leaves and industrial output – surpassed Beijing’s last year as the dirtiest in the world, according to a study by the World Health Organisation. Last Friday, its concentration of PM2.5 particulate matter (the small airborne particles that enter lungs and pose a health threat) was a “hazardous” 652 at one point compared with an “unhealthy” 180 in Mumbai and Hyderabad. Officials hope Delhi’s measures will reduce pollution levels by 50%. They also plan to shutter Delhi’s large coal-fired power plant and make Euro VI emission norms mandatory for vehicles from 2017. “This is being done for the interests of the citizens and the public,” Delhi’s chief secretary, KK Sharma, said in a meeting with reporters. “We expect the public to cooperate.”

Delhi’s most recent effort to regulate polluters – a ban on diesel vehicles more than 10 years old – descended into chaos earlier this year, with traffic jams at checkpoints.

“We must move toward reforms, but we have to be practical,” said Harsh Vardan, a doctor who is India’s minister of science and technology. “Also, don’t say something you can’t implement.”

The city’s smog, always bad in winter, has been unusually thick recently, worsened by fireworks for the festival of lights, Diwali, on 11 November. Air quality worsened sevenfold between October and November, according to a study by the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, which showed that 3% of days in October had severe air quality but jumped to 73% of days in November.

“Clearly there has been a huge increase,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, the centre’s executive director for research and advocacy and head of its air pollution and clean transportation programme. “These levels are several times higher than the standard. This has serious health impacts.” She said that the new plan would be a catalyst for drivers to begin thinking of alternative ways to commute, by car pooling, limiting trips or by foot or bicycle.

Delhi’s last significant push for cleaner air began in the late 1990s, when the government shuttered small polluting factories and switched all buses and auto-rickshaws from diesel to compressed natural gas. But the gains made after the switch began to erode around 2008, when the number of vehicles began to increase, Roychowdhury said.

The concept of limiting commuter travel via road-space rationing has been practised in large cities in Latin America and elsewhere for more than two decades. In Beijing, for example, drivers cannot drive in the city centre one day a week. London invokes a “congestion charge”, a levy of about $17 a day on driving in the city centre.

Some environmental activists said imposing the restrictions would be difficult in the Indian capital, with 16 million residents and 2m registered cars. Although Delhi officials said they would increase bus services and extend times for Metro service, they are still about 10,000 buses short of demand, says Amit Bhatt, a sustainable transport expert in the city.

“It will be very challenging,” said Bhatt, the head of transport at India’s Embarq programme, a World Resources Institute sustainable transport initiative. When a system of alternative days was launched in Bogota, Colombia, he said, many just bought second cheap cars with a different licence plate. Bogota eventually switched the odd-even number system to peak hours only, which has been more successful, Bhatt said.

Yet such moves do reduce the harmful particulate matter in the air, Bhatt said. For example, his group has co-created voluntary car-free days in Delhi and Gurgaon, a suburb. Gurgaon now has voluntary “car-free” Tuesdays in four major corridors. During that time, the PM2.5 matter goes down 50%, Bhatt said.

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post