Delhi Imposes Road Space Rationing. What It May Learn From Cities That Did So

Traffic congestion is one of the greatest barriers to productivity in cities like Delhi. Consider this. We live in cities because we like to access labor markets, supermarkets, malls, movie theatres, parks and other areas without spending much time, money or effort. Prime real estate in cities is very expensive because cities allow you to access much of what we need, including urban infrastructure. Traffic congestion weakens, or even cancels out the benefits living in a city provides you.

Traffic congestion allows lower wages because most workers would not accept jobs which are far from their home. So, many potential jobs are closed to people in cities in which traffic congestion is huge. The lower the income of a households, the greater the costs traffic congestion imposes on them. This is especially true of Delhi, where 1,400 new cars enter roads every day. But, this need no imply that road space rationing is the best way to curb road congestion.  

To counter this, the Delhi government on Friday decided that odd and even number vehicles would ply on roads on alternate days from January 1 onward.

Let us take a look at some other cities that imposed road space rationing in the past, and how successful they were.

Sao Paulo, Brazil's financial centre, implemented road space rationing in 1997. After a year, the city had to phase this out because wealthy residents of the city bought alternate cars with licence plates ending in a digit that is odd or even, depending on the licence plate of their cars. This was enough to offset the benefits of road space rationing.

During 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing, road space rationing was imposed. This was so successful that the government decided to extend the period after the Olympics was over. This is a rare case in which road space rationing worked. China is a low-income country and is densely populated. Not, surprisingly, China is not a car-based country and road space rationing did not compel people to buy more cars to the point that the benefits are offset.

Road space rationing was imposed in 2012 during London Games. Even though this seemed to meet the objective of lowering road congestion, this made commuting extremely difficult in the city. People had to walk or travel by bicycle or foot or take public transport. Visitors to London found this especially difficult.

Licence plate driving bans were imposed in Paris in 2014 to cut down smog. But, this did not prove to be effective because people were willing to travel in cheaper cars. Such cheaper cars were more likely to pollute the roads. There may be some lessons for cities like Delhi in this, because cars in Delhi are more likely to pollute the roads than cars in cities like Paris because they are cheaper and less efficient. Moreover, this led to great public outrage in Paris.