NEW DELHI: VIP movement on Monday morning derailed normal life, stalling traffic and upending commuting in central Delhi. Drivers honked with tempers frayed, and the minutes piled up.
However, the city puts up with congestion every day. Though the waiting time during such movements is usually much longer, five to 30-minute traffic delays are common in the city, particularly at 117 congestion hotspots.
Time is not the only casualty when you get stalled in traffic. TOI crunched the numbers using Monday’s chaos around ITO as a case study to answer a crucial question: What did half-an-hour of waiting really cost Delhi commuters that day?
During peak hours — 8:30 am to 10:30 am and 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm — the ITO intersection witnesses dense traffic flow with cars, two-wheelers and buses caught virtually in a bumper-to-bumper scenario. Estimates suggest that around 200,000 to 300,000 vehicles go through during this time. The roads from Laxmi Nagar towards ITO in the morning and ITO towards Laxmi Nagar in the evening carry much of this load.
According to the Delhi Economic Survey, as of 2019, there were over 1 crore (10 million) registered vehicles in Delhi, with more than 70 lakh (7 million) being two-wheelers and 32.5 lakh (3.25 million) being cars and jeeps. This means two-wheelers constitute about 70% of the total vehicles while cars and jeeps make up around 32.5%.
Hence, TOI estimated that on Monday around 2 lakh vehicles, assuming all were using petrol, passed through the intersection. When traffic stood still, engines didn’t since people were raring to go and expecting to do so any minute.
Taking a vehicle distribution of 33.3% cars and 66.6% two-wheelers, we encountered a stark picture. Based on the fuel consumption rates of 0.8 litres per hour for cars and 0.3 litres per hour for two-wheelers, the total fuel wastage was substantial. Roughly 46,000 litres of fuel was consumed while vehicles remained stationary. To comprehend the enormity of this loss, it can be said that this quantity of fuel could have been used for over 200 Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi trips.
The financial impact was significant with motorists incurring an additional cost of 44 lakhs, calculated at the rate of 95 per litre of petrol. Of course, some vehicles would have been running on CNG, which would bring down the cost. But this example is illustrative of jams that are normal across the city.
The environment was the biggest casualty. Multiple studies have suggested that vehicles are the top source of pollution in Delhi. TOI estimates suggest that a colossal 107 metric tons of CO₂ was spewed into Delhi’s already toxic air, exacerbating the city’s pollution crisis.
“Congestion, regardless of its cause, leads to higher fuel consumption, increased CO2 emissions and elevated air pollution levels. Every effort must be made to decongest roads by ensuring smoother traffic flow, eliminating unnecessary traffic restrictions and removing bottlenecks. While these measures can reduce kilometre emissions per vehicle, the most effective way of decongesting roads, cutting CO2 emissions and checking the flow of pollutants from the transport sector is of enhancing public transport and non-motorised transport (NMT) infrastructure while reducing the reliance on private vehicles,” said Sunil Dahiya, founder and lead analyst, Envirocatalysts.
The ripple effect on Monday extended beyond fuel wastage. With a simple assumption of one person being stuck in a traffic jam of 2 lakh vehicles for 30 minutes, there was a loss of 1 lakh manhours. That’s thousands of delayed office meetings, missed appointments and lost productivity.
All this damage because of one long traffic jam on Monday.
