Page 36 - TT nov - dec 2024 pdf for edition

TRAFFICINFRATECH EXPO 2024

India’s ambitious growth plan is to
From the privacy be a developed economy by 2047,
standpoint, the EU GDPR which means having to reach
rules are so prohibitive at least USD18,000 to 20,000
GDP per capita as against the
for countries to collect current USD3,000, it is required
information to the to decouple car ownership
extent that even from economic growth to see a
sustainable future.
OD details are very Prof. Verma opines India must
difficult for them to get. saturate at a much lower rate of
I would highlight that as car ownership as compared to
something to be some of the developed countries
in order to have a sustainable
cautious about. future. Economic growth is not
– Manjunath Sekhar the sole measure of increasing
mobility. In some countries,
while car ownership levels have
been similar, the usage in terms
in the traffic system, non-lane- vicious circle of congestion. One of vehicle kilometres travelled
based driving behaviour, road solution could be to limit the (VKT) by motorised modes have
safety issues and poor integration ownership and use of personal been lesser, case in point being
between land-use and transport. vehicles and encourage public Japan. Therefore, transportation
In addition, India is a country with transport. Another could be to planning should not be just
high population, dense cities and bring people closer to their place about removing congestion
exponential vehicular growth. of work. and reducing V/C ratio but also
All this has led to high transport about reducing total VKT by
externalities resulting in a growing Countries like the US, Australia motorised mode.
focus on sustainability with a and Japan, which have high GDP
strong systems approach. per capita have seen growth and Three fundamental strategies
saturation at some point between for a green future would be to
It is required to first optimise 600-800 cars per thousand reduce the number of motorised
the existing infrastructure and population. India is yet to enter vehicles, reduce kilometres
then think about future additions. the steep growth period of GDP travelled by all motorised modes
There is a need to manage but is already seeing saturation and shift energy mix to renewable
demand as well as sustain the levels of traffic at 20-25 cars per sources. The impact of use of
resources of this planet. This thousand. This is an opportunity smart solutions can be felt in
has led to the emergence of as well as a challenge. While infrastructure development (trip
a more interesting approach
of positioning, mapping,
remote sensing, data science,
operations research, modeling
and simulation and even
deriving from consumer theory
and economics. Additionally,
communications, electronics,
IT, Big Data and IoT, image
processing are all disciplines that
are substantially contributing to
deriving solutions. Because of the
earlier supply-centric approach
of providing road infrastructure,
cities are currently trapped in a

36 TRAFFICINFRATECH / Nov. - Dec. 2024 / www.trafficinfratech.com