[Reader-list] The world’s cheapest car?

[Rakesh Iyer]

Dear all

In connection to the kind of posts coming up, we have to look up at
certain things, which have to be assessed before going in with the car
as a marker of our development. I have certain questions which I feel
have to be genuinely answered, before this debate can be carried
further, some of which are numerical based, and some of which are
subjective in nature:

1) Which mode of transport (car or bus; or for that matter public or
private mode of transport) is used the most by people of our cities?
If necessary, a break up of the people using different modes of
transport has to be introduced.

2) What is the share of these vehicles plying on the roads, in percentages?

3) Why do people use a particular mode of transport? Is it the lack of
money, is it comfort or is it safety, or is it just the speed, or a
combination of these? Which are the important factors here?

4) More importantly, why do people prefer private modes of transport.
After all, it's not for nothing that people prefer private vehicles
even in cities like Mumbai and Chennai which have fairly well
developed means of public transport. Then what makes them take it?

5) What are the limits upto which these can be tolerated, considering
that infrastructure building in terms of roads for such huge number of
vehicles is a budgetary constraint, and moreover can't be built beyond
a point. People in and around me from large cities have complained of
roads choking like hell, so is this an issue with improper management
of roads, or are there too many private vehicles plying on the road?

6) Finally, what are the costs these private and public vehicles
impose on society. And to what extent can we tolerate these costs.

These are some of the issues we have to look at. The article posted
gave one particular insight into these issues. Instead of practising
cat-fights amongst one another, I feel it would be much better to look
into such issues and more if required, to decide for ourselves whether
we should allow private transport to grow like this, or may be it's
really the time for 'change', as Barrack Obama says.

Regards

Rakesh