Bangalore: In India, more than 95 percent of vehicles are privately owned. Rapid growth of India's urban population, lack of enough public transport, its overcrowded service, which is undependable, slow and the congested roadways are the main reasons why private transport has increased to fulfill this exceeding travel demand.

According to ET stats, in 2010, around 1.76 crore private vehicles i.e. cars, jeeps, and the two wheelers were registered. There are many problems which lead to this rise of private vehicles. As pollution, noise, congestion, and traffic fatality levels are some traits of the public transport, peoples are tending more to travel by their own vehicles.

Another main reason for this rise is, there is no delimitation in getting licenses. According to TOI report, in 2010, out of 1.15 crore driving licenses, 80 percent of them were light motor vehicles (LMV). The absolute number of driving licenses issued annually brings out a need to rethink about the development of the entire system. Nitin Gokran, Joint Secretary (transport) with the Ministry of Road Transport highways, said that, “Accident analysis reports shows that about 78 percent road accidents are caused due to drivers’ fault.” The data was collected from two portals, Sarathi and Vahan, which can be accessed for policy formulation and security.

This clearly shows that India is heading towards private transport mode heavily because of insufficient public transport. In 2010, the number of private vehicles was 100 times more than the public buses. There were near about 19.52 lakh trucks registered between 2007 and 2010. S. P. Singh of IRTFT, head of a transport research group said. “The high number of trucks sold during this period is due to the economic growth, and the manufacturing sector grew 8-10 percent on an average. The export and import trade too went up by about 25 percent. The sale of commercial vehicles has a direct link to the GDP growth.”

According to 2010 reports, there were 65.20 lakh new LMV and 5.11 lakh heavy motor vehicle licenses were granted. Rohit Baluja, a India presenter in UN bodies, said, “Getting easy license is the biggest reason for issues like parking woes, congestion and lack of driving culture.”