Vehicles remain largest contributors to Delhi’s pollution — with numbers growing every year

Officially, determination are 1.50 crore vehicles connected Delhi’s roads — including commercialized and privately owned vehicles — going by information from the transport department. Of these, astir 59 lakh petrol and diesel-fuelled vehicles are overage — implicit the bounds of 15 and 10 years. So, the metropolis lone has 91,52,065 registered vehicles.

Data besides shows successful the past 2 years, Delhi has seen a 32% uptick successful registration of caller vehicles. This year, till November 21, the metropolis registered a full of 6.42 lakh vehicles.

“If we spot it arsenic a increasing trend, it volition transverse past year’s registration figures. Total registrations see vehicles from extracurricular excessively but registered successful the metropolis to ply here. But the percent of specified vehicles is conscionable 1-1.5%. The remainder are caller vehicles sold successful the city,” said a elder transport section official.

Data besides shows that registration of diesel vehicles is coming down. In 2022, it was 15,613. To date, 11,089 diesel vehicles are registered successful the city.

What experts say

Amit Bhatt, Managing Director of the International Council connected Clean Transportation (ICCT), said, “Delhi has a important fleet of CNG vehicles. Treating CNG vehicles arsenic the cleaner alternate is not right; a real-world conveyance emissions survey by ICCT released this twelvemonth has proven so. This is due to the fact that it emits NOx which contributes to the enactment of secondary PM and Ozone. So, the modulation should beryllium from CNG to zero-emission vehicles oregon electric-run vehicles. This has to hap successful an highly accelerated mode successful Delhi due to the fact that of the sheer fig of emergence successful vehicles.”

The analysis, published successful August this year, observed that real-world emissions from transport vehicles disagree importantly from their laboratory values. It recovered that real-world NOx emissions of BS-VI CNG fleets including three-wheelers, PCs, taxis, LGVs (Class I and II), and buses were recovered to beryllium 3.2 times, 2.0 times, 4.0 times, 4.9 times, 14.2 times, and 1.5 times higher, respectively, than type-approval limits.

Anumita Roychowdhury, Executive Director of Research and Advocacy astatine the Centre for Science and Environment, said, “The summation from reducing emissions adjacent aft respective interventions successful the city’s transport assemblage is swamped by explosive motorisation. Meeting zero-emission targets, with a fleet renewal programme, should hap successful an accelerated manner… Poor municipality plan and respective gaps successful the nationalist transport strategy including deficiency of integration, last-mile connectivity… is wherefore backstage vehicles proceed to beryllium favoured more.”