ABSTRACT

Delhi and Stockholm, two very different cities, are compared in order to understand travel modes and sustainability issues. Delhi is a much larger city in terms of population, with an average density about twice that of Stockholm municipality. The proportion of personal motor vehicle use in Stockholm is 2.4 times that in Delhi, which ratio is in between personal and family ownership rates in the two cities. Mobility is almost universally acknowledged to be one of the most important prerequisites to achieving improved standards of living. In addition, in the second half of the twentieth century most families did not own a personal vehicle and so all leisure activity took place within short distances from the home. All the old European and American cities that have extensive rail-based public transport developed in much the same way in the period 1900–1950, before large-scale private vehicle ownership.