Quantifying the Impact of Urban Form and Transit on Vehicle Ownership and Use in Indian Districts: Implications for Fuel Use and Decarbonization

Abstract

Rapid economic growth and urbanization in India are expected to significantly increase vehicle ownership, transportation sector energy demand, and overall greenhouse gas emissions. This study employs the Social-Ecological-Infrastructural-Urban form (SEIU) systems framework to investigate how SEIU determinants influence vehicle ownership and fuel use in India. The primary objective is to quantify the extent to which Infrastructural and Urban form variables can offset the effect of rising incomes on private motorization trends. Using a nationally representative survey of over 250,000 Indian households and a novel database of urban form metrics computed from the Global Buildings Atlas and OpenStreetMap, we conduct All-India and All-India Urban multivariable logistic regression models for vehicle ownership and ordinary least squares regressions models for fuel use per capita. The resulting elasticities and odds ratios are applied in a forward-looking scenario case study of Bengaluru to project vehicle stock and fuel demand from 2022 to 2032. We find that socioeconomic status is the strongest and most consistent predictor of both two-wheeler and car ownership and fuel consumption. Infrastructural and Urban form determinants are associated with modest reductions (<10%) in vehicle ownership but exhibit mixed and smaller effects on fuel use that reveal potential new findings for developing world context. Specifically, urban intersection density and in some cases metro availability appears to correlate with increase in vehicle fuel use, potentially due to congestion delays. Under income and urban form growth based on historical trends, we project that urban form will be insufficient to offset the substantial increases in vehicle ownership and fuel demand. However, “What if” modeling indicates that greater vertical development in Indian Cities (e.g., more mid and high rises) can play a substantially moderating role. These findings expose a need for a diverse policy approach (greater vertical growth, fuel economy standards, and price signals) to achieve transportation decarbonization in the rapidly developing urban India context.