The Delhi Government’s odd-even scheme had little impact on air pollution levels, an analysis by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) said on Tuesday.

The non-governmental organisation (NGO), in its analysis, said that private cars have a very limited impact on the PM 2.5 levels in the city, resulting in a marginal reduction in pollution of 7 and 4 per cent during phase 1 and phase 2, respectively.

“During phase 2 of the scheme, the general variation of PM 2.5 concentration due to daily changes in local emissions, meteorology and background concentrations (influences from outside Delhi) was 42 per cent. The reduction achieved from odd-even scheme during this phase seems too small (about 4 per cent) to be captured, among the other more dominating factors,” the analysis said.

Interestingly, the decrease in pollution was higher during the first phase in winter than the second in summer. “This decline could be probably due to people opting for second cars with alternative number plates, installations of CNG kits or enhanced use of taxis,” TERI said.

The institution has recommended that given these figures, the odd-even scheme should be used “only as an emergency measure when the pollution levels are expected to be very high, such as in winter''.

It said that regularisation of this scheme comes with the added danger of increasing the sales of alternate vehicles since public transport in the city is not an attractive option for citizens.

TERI, in fact, said Delhi should take a leaf from cities such as London, Rome, and Singapore, and impose “congestion pricing” on vehicles plying on the roads to disincentivise driving.

The analysis by Centre for Science and Environment, earlier, had found that the odd-even scheme, itself, did have a reasonable impact on pollution levels, but the impact was nullified due to pollution from crop burning in neighbouring states and the wildfires in Uttarakhand.

Related Topics