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ITS is for giving service, not for revenue generation: Ravi Kumar
Everybody accepts now that ITS is the step forward in traffic management. The
entire world is going ahead with ITS. And information is the mantra for everything. When you plan your travel, you would want to know when your bus or train would arrive or flight would take off. That information is now readily available on your laptop or ipad or mobile. But ITS faces many challenges in our country. The solutions to tackle them are education, engineering, emergency response system & enforcement and as Phansalkar said, electronic enforcement too.
The challenges are of two Cs – Count and Culture. Count entails the vehicle population in India and in every city. As for culture, we all know that if there isn’t a policeman at the traffic signal, everybody tries to jump the signal. That culture has to change. So, how can we compare this with the technology? Putting accident traffic signal controllers reduces the waiting time, enabling the technology to bring in some kind of discipline.
For a unified ITS solution, countrywide e-governance is a requirement. C-DAC is working in the area of ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition), light enforcement system, wireless traffic control system, etc. If you want to put red-light enforcement system in each state, the database, requirement, everything is different. So the enforcement has become the business of the state instead of the centre. Like in Kerala, only the driver of a two-wheeler needs to wear the helmet, not the pillion rider and for a four-wheeler, only the driver needs to wear the seat belt. But in Maharashtra and a few other states, the rule is different. Some states have exempted women from wearing the helmet. So, we don’t have a unified ITS policy. To have a unified ITS, the first requirement is to have a unified policy.
“There is a lack of in-house R&D support. Suppose I want to buy a toll connection or a weigh-in-motion, I look towards Canada, for ATC I look towards Netherlands and for ITACA, I look towards the UK. But to provide support for all this, in-house R&D is required”
Moreover, on the enforcement front, the ALPR (Automatic License Plate Recognition) is the major problem. We face problems in implementing the electronic enforcement systems like the light jumping system or the speed variation detection system. According to a rule passed by the parliament and a court verdict, HSPR (High Security Registration Plate) must be implemented in every state. But the number plates continue to be written in different & fancy fonts and local languages too. It is not possible to enforce a unified system this way.
There is always a delay in executing projects in India. Today everybody is proud of Mumbai ATC but the study on it had begun in 1995-96 and the first phase on 53 junctions was completed in 2012, that is after 16 years. How do you compare a 16-year-old study with today’s time – has the increase in traffic population been taken into account while implementing it? So, a unified ITS faces many challenges which must be overcome. The world is changing rapidly and the change is dynamic. We have to catch up with it.
Another problem is that there are no standards for anything. Standards are required for interoperability. RFP (Request for Proposal) comes with a different specification in each state and in each district. For example, if I want to buy a surveillance camera, I will be given various options from various suppliers. So the buyer is educated by the supplier and does not know the real merits and demerits of each type himself. Unfortunately, no white paper is available to help either the government agencies or the buyers. What happens is that they buy something which they feel is good. Later, they buy something else which they feel is good and then realise that there is no interoperability and maintenance support for both to operate together.
Also, there is lack of in-house R&D support. Suppose I want to buy a toll connection or a weigh-in-motion, I look towards Canada, for ATC I look towards Netherlands and for ITACA I look towards the UK. But to provide support for all this, in-house R&D is required. C-DAC, from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, is putting in a lot of efforts in these but all want to buy from abroad. We have to realise that something working beautifully in Australia or America or the UK does not work in India because the challenges here are totally different. We have a high mix of traffic. Vehicles, non-motorised traffic, animals, bullock carts, trucks, two wheelers – everything moves on the same roads. So that system will need customisation to suit Indian requirements. What sort of customisation do the buyers get from there? After the warranty period gets over, they will have to depend on the same vendor and dance to his tunes.
On the other hand, if you have local vendors and local technology available for all these things, most of these problems will be solved. So, that is the road map towards the solutions. That is why we should have proper standardisation. If at all there is standardisation which is not mandatory, then we have to stick to the standards. For e.g., for signal lights in Bangalore, the sequence is red, amber, green, amber, red and in Mumbai it is red, green, amber, red. So, there are standards set by IRC but we are not keen on sticking to the standards. Likewise, the poles are to be painted golden yellow but in Thiruvanathapuram, they are painted green because it is a green city. So, we ignore the reason and do not stick to the standards.
Once a traffic police officer called me saying he had the funds and wanted us to design a VMS to a proper specification but when I asked him what he wanted written on the VMS, he had no clue. That is how planning is done in our country – you have infrastructure funds but no knowledge on how to use them effectively. Nobody will watch a VMS unless there is some information on it – like ‘there is a roadblock ahead’, etc. The source from where such information can be accessed is not properly laid out. So, the officers too do not know it despite the fact that they are supposed to implement these.
The Ministry can help in these things. It can bring out a policy or a white paper. There is no single word answer for all these things – the problem is multifaceted and the solution also has to be multifaceted. The agencies have to work together towards unified policies and unified solutions for highways and urban traffic in India.
In Mumbai about 60kms of ducting was done for implementing the ATC. C-DAC has technologies that enable implementing the traffic surveillance controller without ducting. And there are vehicle activated traffic signal controllers with ATC compatibility. The technology is right now available with us for the transfer – the entrepreneur can just take it and implement it. As a R&D organisation of GoI, we do not manufacture – we only develop the technology and it is transferred.
We have developed ATCS for Indian road conditions because of the high heterogeneity and limited lane discipline on our roads. The system is working on a VA platform. I believe the ITACA system in Mumbai is not working on EPA platform but this can perform well on a VA platform. That technology has already been given to five different agencies by us including Keltron.
We require e-governance in the national network level and that should be the catchword for unified ITS solution. It is impossible to source information of an offence taking place in a state if the vehicle has entered it from another state. So, a centralised e-governance network and standardisation on all these formats, data format, unified policy and electronic enforcement are required.
So what is the motto of ITS – to generate revenue or to bring discipline? The policemen often show interest in a technology if it promises to generate revenue. So people think differently. This thinking process has to change. The revenue should not be the aim, service should be the aim. In Kerala the public transport is very good but all its modes are running in losses. All types public transport run in losses because they are working in the service sector and not in a profit or business sector.
The culture cannot be changed overnight. It will take time but we can still improve it by electronically enforcing the rules, by bringing in e-governance, by unified ITS policies. A paradigm shift is needed. The government is putting in a lot of efforts like JnNURM funding and BRTS.
