Project

One of the greatest sources of air pollution is the smoke from a large number of vehicles that fill the roads of the city every day. Though there are rules and regulations along with eco-friendly driving habits that can reduce the pollution, it is obvious that most of the vehicles and drivers do not follow them. APDs submitted ‘Shuddha Gaali’, a report that speaks of air quality levels of Mangalore to the City Police Commissioner Sri Chandrashekar and requested him to take appropriate measures with regard to the smoke emitting vehicles plying on our roads. He assured the APDs enlisting the rules and regulations under consideration that this data will inspire and be used for the implementation and further actions to be taken by the authorities.

The air quality at major major locations in the city was assessed by the Shuddha Gaali drive by APD as a part of it’s #StopSmokyVehicles campaign. The study shows that at peak hours of traffic the busiest areas have pollutants that exceed the permissible standard. The report with our proposed way of tackling the issue was submitted to the City Police Commissioner. He assured all the support under his capacity to the proposed way forward which include regular checking of vehicular emissions in the six locations that were identified with high levels of PM2.5. APD urged the commissioner to implement Enforcement of Section 190(2) in the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and rule 115/116 of Central Motor Vehicle Rule 1989s. There is a need for conducting a more extensive study of air pollution in Mangaluru that looks into collecting data at an hourly basis and traces causality with respect to topography, travel patterns, seasons and type of infrastructure related to land use. Fuel has to be tested for Lead content and before any further damage and we hit an irreversible point, the administration needs to think of increasing CNG supplies and shift the public transport to CNG. India has set its AQI standard twice the limit of the global standards. Hence the data collected is much above the global standard, though sometimes falling within the permissible level as per Indian norms. Mangaluru also needs to make it mandatory for BS-IV which is the case in few cities of India, failing to which will worsen the situation.