Transportation and Cars

India is the fifth largest car market in the world. Every year, it adds a minimum of 500,000 cars. We already have an estimated 27 million cars in the country, ranging from ultra-luxe automobiles to entry-level models. Add to it the two million buses, and 140 million bikes and scooters.

The chaos on Indian roads is getting worse, and one big reason for that is the inability of the public transport system to cope with the challenges of a burgeoning population and ever rising demand for ferrying passengers both in urban and rural areas. Despite the recent advancements in transportation network - metro rail and mono rail networks, and air-conditioned buses - an increasing number of people are having to depend on their own means of transport. This creates gridlocks in most urban centres, long commutes, enormous pollution and traffic jams during peak hours, besides poor traffic management and road conditions, and insufficient parking lots.

According to a recent World Bank study, only about 20 Indian cities with populations over 500,000 have any kind of organised public transport systems and the share of public transport in large Indian cities have declined from about 70 per cent in 1994 to 40 per cent in 2007.

But how does one solve this crucial issue? In this section, Travis Kalanick, founder of Uber, looks at the ridesharing and ride-aggregating app revolution. Other stories include the experiments with driverless transportation and intelligent transport network.