“India’s capital city is to reprise a two-week experiment in road-rationing, imposing new rules to restrict car use, as it seeks to clean up the world’s most polluted urban air. From April 15, New Delhi will re-impose rules that permit each of the city’s cars to be on the roads every alternate day based on their licence plate numbers. The fortnight-long restrictions come after authorities received strong public support for a similar experiment in January.
“Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister of New Delhi, said surveys registered positive backing for the scheme, with fourth-fifths of those who responded to a call for public feedback endorsing the programme. ‘We are seriously considering whether we can do this for 15 days every month,’ he said. ‘We can’t do this on a permanent basis until we get better public transport.’ But analysts suggest that may be Mr Kejriwal’s eventual goal. “I think we are working towards a situation where this will be a permanent feature,” said Vikrom Mathur, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think-tank.
“…The second phase of the study appears intended to check the impact of the scheme on local ozone levels, more a problem in the hot summer than the cold winter. However, there is resistance. India’s car industry is angered over the restrictions on car use — and sales — in the battle against air pollution. This month, Ralph Speth, chief executive of luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover — owned by India’s Tata Motors, complained that the exhaust of its vehicles was “cleaner” than the air it “sucked in” in Delhi.” FT. Read it on delhiair.org.
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