I was reading the article ‘Achieving A Green Agenda For Delhi’ when a paragraph caught my attention.
A bold chief minister of Delhi could learn from the mayor of Bogota. He threw out the city’s expensive highway expansion plan, poured his budget into a maze of cycling paths, hiked fuel taxes and banned drivers from commuting by car more than three times a week. In the third year of his term, cars were banned and thousands of people took to the street, cycling, walking and rollerblading their way to work or school. His extreme measures paid off and the toxic haze over the city thinned, hospital admissions fell by a third and for the first time in four years no one was killed by traffic. Can Delhi undertake such a bold initiative?
How I wish the same can be done in Mumbai. A sizeable part of the Mumbaikars would collectively heave a big, not to mention clean, sigh of relief!
A bold chief minister of Delhi could learn from the mayor of Bogota. He threw out the city’s expensive highway expansion plan, poured his budget into a maze of cycling paths, hiked fuel taxes and banned drivers from commuting by car more than three times a week. In the third year of his term, cars were banned and thousands of people took to the street, cycling, walking and rollerblading their way to work or school. His extreme measures paid off and the toxic haze over the city thinned, hospital admissions fell by a third and for the first time in four years no one was killed by traffic. Can Delhi undertake such a bold initiative?
How I wish the same can be done in Mumbai. A sizeable part of the Mumbaikars would collectively heave a big, not to mention clean, sigh of relief!
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