While the transport infrastructure in the growing Indian cities is already crumbling, it may get even worse with the one-lakh Tata Nano. The rolling out of the world's cheapest car in October this year will bring car ownership within the reach of more Indians than ever before, and is likely to take traffic volumes to unprecedented levels.

Incapable of supporting such a high level of car use, cities will witness congestion and delays, with lack of parking spaces further eating into the available road space. The already dramatic rise in car ownership and use, as a result of overcrowding and lack of reliability of public transport, has led to the cities reaching saturation point, note the findings of recently-released report Integrated City Making by London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)-based think tank, Urban Age. A joint venture of LSE and Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society, Urban Age undertook a research programme in four Indian cities to understand how these cities have responded to the challenges of growth, vis-a-vis the approaches adopted in London, New York, Berlin and Johannesburg.

Furthermore, a disconnect between the country’s urban planners and transport engineers has led to a complete transport collapse in four major metros of the country — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore.

Consider these:

In Delhi, 13 people die on the road every day.

In Mumbai, more than 75 per cent car owners do not drive the car themselves.

In Bangalore, the average time taken by an IT professional to reach work is 2.5 hours.

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