Pune now has more vehicles than humans

And, it is a city where there are 4 two-wheelers for every car.

Pune now has a weird distinction. It has 36.2 lakh vehicles, but only 35 lakh humans. Officials say this may just be the first time this has happened in an urban area of India. 

The Regional Transport Office (RTO) MH-12 has said it has exceeded its revenue target by a significant level two years in a row. For 2017-18, the revenue was Rs 1021.6 crore, a whopping 18 percent more than the target of Rs 862.3 crore. "We had overshot the target even in 2017 by 130.31 percent, netting Rs 783.93 crore, with a growth of Rs 237.63 crore then," said RTO chief Babasahen Ajri.

The registration of four-wheelers in 2017-18 rose 9.57 percent and two-wheelers grew at 8.24 percent. However, the highest growth was the 25 percent increase in the taxi-cab segment with a total of 28,344 cabs registered against 22,696 in 2016-2017. Note, that is only the growth in the registrations, not the total number of vehicles.

When it comes to sheer numbers, Pune is still a city dominated by two-wheelers, which rose to 27.03 lakh in 2017-18, from 24.97 lakh in the year before that. The total number of cars in the city increased to 6.45 lakh from 5.89 lakh in the previous year.

This means, going plainly by the math, every single household in the city should have at least one vehicle. In most cases, this would translate to multiple vehicles in each household.

RTO chief Ajri says the ever-rising number of vehicles has caused massive traffic management issues in most parts of the city, and that traffic rule violations are already up. Pune can now only hope the upcoming Metro and other major road projects help ease congestion. 

(With inputs from IANS)