Adopted by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) in 2017, the TOD Policy provides for densification of areas around transit corridors by allowing higher floor area ratio (FAR) or higher built-up area for residential and commercial developments.
The idea is to promote the use of public transport, encourage walking and cycling, and develop “compact walkable communities”, according to the policy. This is expected to not only boost a city’s revenue via high-density real estate development along transit corridors, but also help in recovery of investment cost of capital-intensive transit projects, such as metro rail.
The influence zone plan, which is a detailed plan of the area around a transit station, has to be prepared by the local authorities. States can formulate their own TOD policy since land is a state subject or can adopt the Centre’s policy.
The majority of cities in India have, however, not been able to implement the TOD Policy despite 905 km of metro rail network — 676 km was added in the last 10 years in 20 cities — being operational across the nation.
Delhi is a case in point. The national capital got a metro network funded by the Centre and city government in 2002. The city currently has 393 km of metro rail network, built and operated by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, which is one of the 10 largest in the world.
While a TOD Policy is in place in Delhi, development around the city’s metro corridors has been largely unplanned and low-density, with poor access to stations and last-mile connectivity.
The Delhi TOD Policy was first notified in 2015 and revised in 2019, after the Centre’s TOD guidelines were issued in 2017.
Planning experts ThePrint spoke to said that development of the commercial component at metro stations such as Akshardham, Lajpat Nagar, Dwarka etc, has not been done optimally.
The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is carrying out development of the city’s first TOD project in Karkardooma area — the project was conceived in 2015 but construction work started in 2021 — in which close to 1,800 flats will be constructed in the first phase, scheduled for completion in 2024.
The DDA is also in the process of preparing influence zone plans of 12 TOD nodes (stations where two or more metro corridors intersect or the footfall is high) in the city.
Planning and development of two nodes at Jangpura and New Delhi Railway Station will be carried out by National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) and Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA), respectively.
A senior DDA official, who did not want to be named, told ThePrint: “We are now in the process of getting the influence zone plan ready for 12 nodes, which have been identified to be developed according to the TOD Policy. The work at Phase-I of Karkardooma is going on and will be completed soon. We are in the process of appointing consultants to prepare influence zone plans for stations at Dwarka and Rohini. The RLDA and NCRTC will be preparing the zone plans for their respective transit nodes.”
Till the time the influence zone plans are ready, development around the nodes, including utilisation of increased FAR, can’t be undertaken, a second DDA official admitted.
According to urban development experts, lack of planning, multiplicity of authorities resulting in lack of coordination, poor public bus transport infrastructure, absence of regulations to dissuade the use of privately-owned vehicles, etc, in cities are some of the important factors responsible for slow implementation of the TOD Policy in cities.
Jagan Shah, chief executive officer of The Infravision Foundation, a Gurugram-based think tank on public policy on infrastructure, told ThePrint: “We (policymakers and government) are double-minded about urban transport. We want to sell cars but also promote public transport; these are incompatible ideas when it comes to TOD. City authorities will have to make tough decisions to dissuade people from using private vehicles and ensure a good public bus transport network in cities for TOD to be successful.”
According to India Infrastructure Report (IIR) 2023 on urban planning and development, released on 4 December, 2023, one of the major problems with urban design in India is lack of TOD guidelines in the master plan of cities.
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Planning delays in TOD
Several other cities such as Bengaluru and Ahmedabad and states such as Uttar Pradesh and Haryana have also notified a TOD Policy based on the Centre’s policy. But implementation is yet to take off due to delay in preparing plans and integration with a city’s master plan.
In Bengaluru, where metro operations started in 2011-12, the TOD Policy was notified only in November last year.
When asked the reason for delay in the notification of the policy, a senior Karnataka government official said: “The policy was to be incorporated in the city’s master plan, which was due for revision in 2015. But as the new master plan is yet to be notified, the policy was notified separately. We are now preparing plans for six (metro) stations.”
Urban transport experts believe that land use planning along transit corridors should be done simultaneously and not after the mode is operationalised.
“The problem is that we are now retrofitting TOD. A city can benefit a lot from TOD if planning for areas around transit corridors starts along with work on the corridor. In most cities, large-scale development has already taken place along the corridors,” said Amit Bhatt, Managing Director-India, International Council on Clean Transportation.
The housing ministry is now pushing cities and state governments to proactively implement urban reforms, including TOD, to address challenges such as traffic congestion, pollution, housing, lack of transportation facilities, etc.
For the past two years, the Centre has started giving incentives for implementing urban reforms. In this financial year, Rs 15,000 crore has been earmarked for this purpose, according to senior housing ministry officials.
R. Srinivas, former town and country planner with the Town and Country Planning Organisation under the housing ministry, told ThePrint: “For the past few years, there has been a major push towards urban reforms. It will take time to see the benefits of TOD and other reforms. It is now that cities have started focusing on urban development in a big way.”
Challenges in implementation & possible solutions
According to IIR 2023, there are three major challenges in implementation of TOD in India — at planning, institutional and ground level.
The report states that at the planning level, most urban local bodies “perceive TOD as a means of revenue generation through increased FAR”.
At the institutional and ground level, there are multiple authorities involved, for instance, the metro corridor is developed by one agency while the road where it is constructed belongs to another agency, which often results in a “lack of coordination”, the report notes.
“The confusion about the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders such as urban local bodies, regional transport authorities, and traffic police in taking up multi-modal integration (MMI) and first and last-mile connectivity further exacerbates the problem,” the report states.
Officials in Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA), which has prepared the draft TOD guidelines for the city, said many problematic issues have been factored in while preparing the policy.
The CMDA’s TOD policy will pave the way for high-density development along the city’s Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS), metro corridor, national highways and arterial roads, including 30 metre-wide roads.
A senior CMDA official told ThePrint: “The regulations have been carefully drafted for densification of all transit corridors, including metro corridors. While higher built-up area (FAR) will be given on transit corridors, we are also coming up with a policy for amalgamation of plots so that plot owners in already developed areas can avail the benefit of higher built-up area.”
“We also plan to prepare local area plans for areas along transit corridors, under which detailed plans will be prepared to strengthen the road network and for amendments in development control norms,” he said.
According to experts, cities, especially where metro corridors or other mass transit corridors are sanctioned, should have a Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA).
“Multiplicity of authorities is a major concern in cities and often results in delay or poor execution of projects. There is an urgent need to have a UMTA, which is backed by legislation so that it has adequate powers to get work done. A single transport agency will solve the problems we face in cities today to a large extent,” said Bhatt.
At the ground level, the implementation of TOD has to be “holistic”, said experts.
The IIR 2023 report cites the case of Ahmedabad where TOD was undertaken along the Janmarg bus rapid transit system corridor.
“Large-scale high-rise developments appeared within the influence area of 500 metres. This resulted in an increase in personalised vehicular traffic, leading to traffic bottlenecks and congestion at most junctions along the bus rapid transit system. Similar problems may arise in other metro cities that desire to adopt TOD,” the report states.
It added that multi-modal integration and planning for first and last mile connectivity are essential in TOD.
Experts also believe that for TOD to be successful, it has to be supported with a good public bus network.
H.M. Shivanand Swamy, professor at CEPT University in Ahmedabad and an expert on TOD, told ThePrint: “Cities are largely focusing on increasing the FAR around the transit corridor; this is not the right approach. One of the key measures required is providing seamless connectivity between metro and public bus systems. Cities have to invest in buses for TOD to be successful.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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