Clogged with traffic, bridges choke Ahmedabad's daily breath

Ahmedabad: In an unprecedented move to quantify and address the growing menace of air pollution, three organizations -- System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR) of ministry of earth sciences, IIPH-Gandhinagar, Space Applications Centre (SAC) -- have prepared the largest emission inventory of Ahmedabad.
An exhaustive 81,217 emission sources - from road stretches, industry and housing clusters, small and micro enterprises and even kitchen in households -- were studied.Some startling preliminary discoveries found that Subhash bridge saw the highest traffic of 1.7 lakh vehicles passing from 6 am to 11.59 pm on any weekday, pushing up huge amounts of vehicle emissions into air, followed by Nehru bridge with 1.22 lakh vehicles, Ellisbridge 1.20 lakh and express highway with 1.1 lakh vehicles.
"This vehicle data is critical, emissions released by 1 litre of diesel is equivalent to burning 10 litres of petrol. The vehicle count has revealed that light commercial, and heavy commercial diesel vehicles, with rising private diesel vehicles pose a serious concern for Ahmedabad," says SAFAR project director Dr Gufran Beig.
The survey found that among the 1.8 lakh vehicles that were counted every day on arterial stretches, four-wheeler petrol vehicles constituted 48% and diesel vehicles 30%, rest were CNG vehicles.
Ninety per cent of most polluting light commercial vehicles and 86% heavy commercial vehicles are run on diesel. The high court has directed the state government to ensure that all vehicles plying on Gujarat roads should be converted to CNG to curb air pollution.
CEE founder-director Karitekya Sarabhai, who was present during the presentation, said, "Right to clean air is a citizen's right. Unless there is support from public and collaborations between various concerned agencies, we cannot counter this threat."