Assessment of Environmental Pollution Load of Transit Corridor in India

In India, Transit Corridor development is an integral part of planning. India has an extensive transit network of 3.6 million km - the second largest in the world. The Government of India (GOI) launched a radical program in the late 1990s to upgrade three key national transit corridors: (i) the Golden Quadrilateral; (ii) the East-West Corridor; and (iii) the North-South Corridor, covering about 13,000 kilometers. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) was mandated with the responsibility of carrying out this National Highways Development Program (NHDP) in 2000s. In post NHDP Phase III programme a massive programe was involving of upgradation of about 10,417 km of national highways. This programme was an addition to the onging NHDP and includes upgrading linkages to the NHDP corridors. This programme involved four or six laning of existing two lane national highways of most of the selected national highways over 29 states and 7 union territories in India. The criteria for selection of the project roads are corridor with high density traffic which has avaergae daily traffic of more than 30,000 passenger car equivalent units, carridor providing state capitals with links to the NHDP network and corridor providing access to economic and tourist centres. The number of vehicles on roads has been growing at compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 8 percent in the last five years. The growth rate of vehicles is the backbone of economic development and the Indian automotive Industry is the second fastest growing in the world. About 8 million vehicles are produced annually in the country today. In 2009, the country reported 121.63 million registered motor vehicles, a motorization rate of 22 vehicles per 1000 population (Road Transport Yearbook, 2008. Motor vehicle growth rate has been largely concentrated in the major cities. India has experienced tremendous growth rate in motor vehicles & this lead to interest of environmentalist, business leaders, government officials and researchers for a number of reasons. Already, India’s motor vehicles have had a substantial detrimental impact on the environment. Automobiles are the primary sources of air pollution in India’s major cities. In India, transport sector emits an estimated 261 Tg of CO2, of which 94.5 % was contributed by road transport. The transport sector in India consumes about 17 % of total energy & is responsible for 60% of the Green House gas from various activities (Tedoy, 2008). The pollution from vehicles is due to discharge like CO, unburnt HC, Pb, NO2 & suspended particulate matter mainly from tail pipes. The potential massive size of the nation’s motor vehicle fleet has raised concern over the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere & its potential for global change. An examination of the factors that have contributed to rapid growth rate of motor vehicle in India is very important to understand the likely future course that the growth might take. Central Pollution Control Board, India is executing a nation-wide programme of ambient air quality monitoring known as National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP). The network consists of three hundred and forty two (342) operating stations covering one hundred and twenty seven (127) cities/towns in twenty six (26) states and four (4) Union Territories of the country. All receptors are not being monitored all along national highways. There is huge gap in database preparation, monitoring and analysis. This paper apraises the alignments of national highways all over Country with traffic density and available databse of pollution load. The overall anlayis gives the national wide framework of pollution load all along the transit corridor as baseline anlsysis for future planning.