To effectively address the emerging urbanisation challenges, the Ministry of Urban Development has come out with a multi-pronged policy framework to promote living close to mass urban transit corridors. This new initiatives seeks to promote ‘Transit Oriented Development (TOD)’ which enables people to live within walking or cycling distance from transit corridors like the Metros, monorail and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridors, currently being taken up on a large scale.
The ministry has formulated a ‘National Transit Oriented Development Policy’ which will be discussed with the states and Union Territories at a National Workshop on Urban Development. This policy seeks to enhance the depth of understanding of states and UTs on TOD as a viable solution to many of the challenges like haphazard urban growth and sprawl, mobility, rapidly rising private vehicles on roads, pollution, housing choices, etc. This new urban design and planning in the form of TOD, is being incentivised by the ministry under two more initiatives, viz., Metro Policy and Green Urban Mobility Scheme which also will be discussed with states and UTs for taking them on board.
Under TOD, city densification will be promoted along mass transit corridors through vertical construction by substantially enhancing FARs (Floor Area Ratio) backed by promotion of Non-motorised Transport Infrastructure for walking and cycling to transport stations, development of street networks in the influence zone of transit corridors, multimodal integration, and effective first and last mile connectivity through feeder services to enable people access public transit in 5 to 10 minutes from home and workplaces.
States and UTs will be required to incorporate TOD in the Master Plans and Development Plans of cities besides identifying ‘Influence Zones’ from transit corridors for tapping revenue streams.
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