Fifth Urban Mobility Conference and Expo held

Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), Government of India organised the fifth edition of Urban Mobility India (UMI) Conference and Expo in Delhi in December 2012. Spread over four days, UMI had speakers from various countries and the conference was addressed by two ministers: Kamalnath, Minister for Urban Development and Ajay Maken, Minister for Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA). While the first day of UMI saw papers on various projects presented by transport authorities from all over India, the next three days had experts discussing issues of giving momentum and rectifying the roadblocks on the path of urban mobility in India.

Kamalnath, in his address at the valedictory session, said that instead of waiting for Phase-III of Delhi Metro to be completed and then moving on to Phase-IV, the Centre would go ahead with work on some sections of the latter along with the work of Phase-III. He expressed his keen interest in encouraging monorail as ?it would serve as a good feeder to unviable projects by supplementing Metro in certain routes?.

Organised under the stewardship of Dr Sudhir Krishna, Secretary, MoUD, and implemented with details looked into by S K Lohia, OSD (UT) and EO Joint Secretary, MoUD, the UMI was given shape and implemented by Institute of Urban Development (IUT). Along with the two, the speakers included Susan Kurland, Assistant Secretary for aviation and International Affairs, US; A P Mishra, Member Engineering, railway Board; Deepa Dasmunshi, Minister of State for Urban Development; Kim Dong-ha, Balanced Development Bureau, Changwon, South Korea; Manfred Breithaupt, Senior Transport Advisor, Germany; Prof P K Sikdar, President, ICT; Jitendra Tyagi, Director (Works), Delhi Metro Corporation Ltd; Dr S Gangopadhyay, Director, CRRI; Samira Israne, Public Affairs Manager for India & Oceania, Directorate for European & International Affairs, France; Herve Beaudet, CEO Asia, Lumiplan, Singapore; Prof Peter Newman, Director, John Curtin Distinguished Professor of Sustainability and many others.

Topics of discussion and roundtable included ?Energy and Climate Change Issues with Sustainable Transport Strategies?, ?BRT ? a Smart way to Move?, ?IPT in Indian Cities?, Complete Street Design and Access to Public Transport?, ?JNNURM Cities (SLBMs) ? Experience with benchmarking? and ?Congestion Pricing? among many others. The expo had about 38 exhibitors with the European Pavilion, the biggest pavilion, hosting many European companies whose representatives introduced their products / solutions / technologies at the conference. TrafficInfraTech too was an exhibitor at the Expo.