Surat: Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its report ‘Performance Audit of Air Pollution Control stated that the state of Gujarat as of September 2022 has 151.4 vehicles for every square kilometer, with vehicle density increasing by 22.8 or 17% since March 2019.

As per the report, Surat had the highest vehicle density at 956 per sq km with 43.53 lakh vehicles, followed by Ahmedabad at 714 vehicles per sq km with 57.92 lakh wheelers. Vadodara has a destiny of 362.11 vehicles per sq km with 27.32 lakh vehicles in the city.

The vehicle density in March 2001 was just 28.4 which rose to 73.5 by March 2011 and from 2011 to 2019, vehicle density rose to 128.5. Later, The vehicle density saw an increase of 17% from march 2019 to Sept 2022 which would have been higher if sales would not have gone down drastically after Covid hit.

CAG also reported that in  22 years from 2000 to 2022, the total number of vehicles registered in the state increased to 2.97 crores from 0.56 lakh, a 432% increase. The number of vehicles registered in 2000 was 0.56 lakh.

As per the officials in the transportation dept lack of pubic transport infrastructure is the cause of an increasing number of private vehicles. Whereas habit of not using the available public transport as much as we should is another reason said a researcher from Surat.

DeshGujarat