Every fifth person in Tamil Nadu owns a vehicle. The vehicle population in the state has now crossed the 15-million mark (1.5 crore), with 17 lakh vehicles — 14 lakh of them were two-wheelers — hitting the road during the last financial year.
As for Chennai, the city is groaning under the burden of about 37 lakh vehicles, 3 lakh of them registered during FY 2011-12.
In the state, 82.3 per cent (1.26 crore) vehicles are two-wheelers, while Chennai city accounts for 76.4 percentage (28.13 lakh) of the total 36.87 lakh vehicles.
The number of two-wheelers in the state has been burgeoning at an alarming rate over the past two decades.
As on April, 1, 2012, the two-wheeler population has touched a staggering 1.26 crore from 1.12 crore the previous year.
In the last decade alone, the state has witnessed a whopping 175 percentage growth in two-wheelers that was around 46 lakh on April 1, 2002, whereas only 13.91 lakh two-wheelers had been plying on the state roads in 1993, sources in the transport department told this paper.
At the same time, registration of new cars has also kept pace with that of two-wheelers.
The number of cars in the state, which was 2.46 lakh in 1993, has escalated to 4.83 lakh in 2002 and has shot up to a gigantic 13.41 lakh, registering around 450 per cent increase over the past two decades.
Similarly, registration of lorries in the state has also seen a sharp increase over the years.
The number of lorries has grown two-fold from that of 1.38 lakh in April 1, 2000, to 2.95 lakh in 2012.
Of the total 13.41 lakh cars registered in the state, 6.22 lakh cars ply on Chennai roads, and of the 2.09 lakh autorickshaws, Chennai accounts for nearly 30 per cent – 66,679 autos.
As per Census 2011, Tamil Nadu has a population of 7.21 crore, and if we go by the total vehicle population, every fifth person in the state owns a vehicle.
Experts attribute lack of proper public transport as the reason for the phenomenal increase of private vehicles.