Automobile dependence and automobility: A Research Agenda for just mobility in Indian cities

Keywords: Automobile dependence, automobility, mobilities, India, cities
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Sustainable Development Goals 11 seeks to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. Transport and mobility are key to achieving this goal. A key challenge to making transportation sustainable and inclusive will be to find ways to disrupt the growing automobile dependence in the megacities of the global South. Addressing the situation of traffic saturation and rising automobile dependence has been key to urban transport policy making and planning in India since the 2010s. Solutions such as modernized public transit, park and ride facilities, mass rapid transit, cycle lanes, redesigning roads with integrated cycle and pedestrian infrastructures, have been proposed with the objective of reducing automobile dependence and enticing automobile users away from their vehicles. Despite these numerous efforts the results have been largely ineffective and Indian cities today are, if anything, more captive to the automobile. One way of making sense of this unsustainable conundrum would be to rely on the “mobility turn”, which proposes that movement is embedded with questions of power and meaning. Adopting the mobility turn, we critically examine the on-street efficacy of transport solutions in Indian cities by considering power impregnated in these solutions. The attention to power reveals an on-street politics that entrenches automotive dependence despite the explicit intention to diminish it. Through this research, we seek to identify particular arrangements of automobility politics that are released through distinct mobility solutions to combat automobile dependence.