High levels of transport sector emissions can in large part be traced to the absence of incentives to encourage cleaner technologies such as electric vehicles, reduced use of private cars, shifts towards lower-emission petrol or diesel engines, and increased use of public transport. To encourage evidence-based policy innovation the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago Trust in India (EPIC India) and the Transport Department of NCT of Delhi have partnered to provide strategic, technical, and policy-making support to the Transport Department, GNCTD.

The objective of the Research and Programmatic Unit (RPU) is to reduce vehicular pollution through evidence-based governance in the NCT of Delhi by reducing pollution exposure and minimizing congestion through a High Pollution Early Warning System that aims to introduce India’s first congestion pricing pilot, monitoring and enforcement of vehicular pollution norms through a third-party decoy vehicle audit of Pollution Checking Centers (PCCs) and setting up of Data Analytics – Decision Support System (DSS) for electronic enforcement of pollution norms. The partnership will also provide programmatic support on clean and sustainable mobility, uptake in public transit to reduce on-road private and commercial vehicular fleets, and enable knowledge sharing and build capacity among government authorities on monitoring and management of vehicular pollution norms.

The program is expected to have an overall impact on enabling the Transport Department to innovate, implement, generate evidence, and scale-up interventions that successfully reduce vehicular pollution in the NCT of Delhi, including interventions related to targeted messaging on pollution and health impacts, congestion management, and PUC certification policy. The partnership will also help in instituting Data Analytics Systems that enable the Transport Department to track source disaggregated vehicular pollution and congestion data and utilize it for effective monitoring and enforcement of vehicular pollution abatement initiatives. An envisioned outcome is also training and building capacity within the government systems to ensure sustainability and replicability of the analytics, design, and implementation work undertaken within all vehicular pollution abatement initiatives within the Department.