TrafficInfraTech Expo: Seminar: May 19, 2012

ITS development is too slow and fragmented in India: Dr CSRK Prasad

We have about 4200000kms of roads in India with 71000kms of national highways and another 132000kms of state highways. These two categories of roads put together are about 4-6% of the total length of roads but they carry about 40% of the traffic. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has launched several schemes like the golden quadrilateral, north-south and east-west corridors where they are widening the roads to four lanes and even six lane divided carriage-way, etc. So this has brought in the mobility aspect. The distance between the cities, that is the time taken to reach from one city to another, has shrunk drastically but at the same time along with it some challenges like corridor management, the safety issues, etc. have come into the picture.

Let’s look at the urban scenario. As per the 2001 census we have 70 towns with a population of five lakhs. This is expected to double by 2031 to about 146 towns, and a population of about 60 crore is expected to live in these towns. By another 10 to 20 years, another 40% of the Indian population will only be in the urban areas. Because of this population growth, there is a paradigm shift. As of now the trip rate is around 0.82 to around 1.5 across different cities. Smaller cities are on 0.8 trips per person per day on an average and this is going to increase to two by the end of 2030. The speed in major corridors of the cities is around 15-25kms per hour during the peak hours. It is expected to be reduced by 10kms per hour in the future. If the same conditions continue, issues of mobility will crop up. People will not reach their destinations as quickly as they would want to and will also not enjoy good safety whether they walk, use bicycles or travel by public or private mode of transport.

We need to adopt the advanced technologies like the intelligent transportation system to sort out our problems at the urban level. What are the policies? What is the government of India doing? The Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) rightly brought out a policy document — National Urban Transport Policy in 2006. It has realised the importance of the ITS and emphasised its use in traffic management as well as in public transportation system to improve its efficiency and productivity. Once the ITS is used effectively in public transport, more and more people will be attracted and diverted towards public transportation. As a result, private vehicles will reduce on urban roads thus reducing congestion, fuel consumption and air pollution. Plus, there will be more safety on the roads.

These are all multiple objectives for which you can attract more and more people towards the public transportation by intelligently utilising the latest technology like the traveler information system and coordination of the signals. For public transportation along the corridors, the JnNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission) is the most effective. In this, the government of India (GOI), again through the Ministry of Urban Development, is spending more than two lakh crore rupees to improve the infrastructural facilities all over the urban areas. They are focusing much on the BRTS (Bus Rapid Transit System) to give a beautiful and encouraging glamorous role to public transportation. They are introducing new state-of-the-art bus system so that these buses are equipped with the GPS system to enable the passenger to know precisely at what time their buses are expected at different stations. Once this is fully operative, the passengers or the users will be well informed about their travel. Hence, they can take better decisions for their travel, utilise their time and reduce their travel time. About 65 cities across the country have benefited from this scheme. Similarly, the state governments are establishing ITS related projects like the traffic and transit management centres in Bangalore, implementing ITS in Mysore and going in for multilevel parking projects using the ITS technologies in Indore.

The MoUD is also trying to bring about the service level benchmarks in several aspects. One of them is the ITS. The ministry has identified five areas like the availability of traffic surveillance system, passenger information system, global pollution system, synchronisation of the signals and integrated ticketing system and is focusing on them. This will benefit the users and give them a better quality of transportation service in the urban areas. MoUD would like to see how the cities are implementing it. It will then encourage the cities to compete with each other to provide better facilities, assess the services and quality of the services being provided by various cities and give an award of excellence in urban transportation to the city that carries out the job well. One award is exclusively reserved for the best ITS implementation. Vivek Phansalkar, JCP – Traffic, Mumbai received it at the 2011 Urban Mobility India conference.

In addition to that, the Urban Ministry has introduced a common mobility card, same as CMC which was launched in December 2011. It is trying to integrate common ticketing with all aspects of transportation. The same card can be used for paying the tolls as well as the parking fees in the different cities. It is like a cashless transaction across different modes of transportation.

Then there are world bank funded urban transportation policies taken up by the MoUD to inject the ITS technologies in public transport system to improve its quality of service. Automatic fare collection system of Allahabad and bus signal prioritisation at Indore falls under this. The latter means whenever the bus approaches the synchronised junction, it automatically gets green. So, the buses need not stop, they can just move on. This will reduce the travel time and attract more people towards bus travel.

Recently the planning commission constituted a committee – National Transport Development Policy Committee. The ministry has a working group and has prepared Vision 2030 document for the next 20 years. It mentions what should be done in all the urban areas and that the trip rate will fall between 1.2 and 2. It wants to take the help of the information and communication technologies for a five year plan period like a vehicle tracking system, real traffic control system, real-time passenger information system, etc. At the same time, the government will have some kind of interventions like the intense rise in the technology adaptation, enabling the common payment gateway and the protection of the passengers’ personal information, etc.

For example in case of Hyderabad, the eight lane outer ring road known as expressway is designed for 120kms per hour. It is under construction and the ITS is being implemented on two of its eight lanes. In these two lanes, the government would like to experiment the electronic toll collection system. There, the vehicle need not stop to pay the toll, it can continue to move and pay the toll through the ETC system. In addition, they are developing the first master plan to implement ITS, Hyderabad being the first city to prepare a master plan for ITS. They are trying to integrate the buses, good transportation, taxis, etc. Buses will be prioritised and accident information system will be implemented. All of them will be put together — ITS has 40 components. They are trying to see whether you can develop a system architecture like national level, state level and city level for its implementation.

At the national level like non urban rural level, the national road transport policy of 2006 by Thangaraj Committee too had emphasised on the usage of ITS in public transportation system as well as the freight traffic. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is developing the road information system which will have many modules like location, the front system, etc. They will introduce ITS in three modules like traffic management system, accident management system and toll management system and effectively utilise the latest technology for the proper implementation.

The Nandan Nilekani Committee is working on a suitable technology for implementation of the ETC system in our country because there are different systems like dedicated short range communication, radio frequency, etc. Several technologies are available across the globe but the Committee is trying to find out which technology is best suited to our country in terms of it being strong, low cost and long lasting. It has recommended passive RFID technology for automatic vehicle identification as well as for the toll collection. A working committee on road transport for the 12th five year plan too has emphasised on the ITS technologies by identifying different areas like travel information, traffic management, etc.

The MoRTH has prepared a detailed project report for the national Expressway network. It will not stop just at the construction part of the highways because the Ministry also plans to build an Expressway network for the country which will be designed for a speed of 120kms per/hour. This is equal to the Freeway of the USA or Autobahn of Germany. It wants to emphasise the different ITS technologies like sensors, variable message signs, high wave advisory radio, etc. For city to city public transport, the state government and the GOI would like to give incentives for the effective utilisation of ITS and public transportation system connecting various cities.

So, against this backdrop if you try to look at various countries across the globe, they have their own ITS polices like ITS Europe, ITS Australia, ITS Japan, ITS USA, etc., but where is ITS India? There is no ITS India. This is where we stand. We require an ITS policy for our country which deals with the transportation issues in our country. The ITS development is too slow and too fragmented in our country. There is no unified approach. We are not planning and we are not moving in a phased, planned manner. We want to utilise the ITS but at the same time there are shortcomings and infrastructural limitations. Unless and until we build the roads properly, it is futile to implement ITS. That’s what the developed countries have done but in India, we are going parallel. We have to build the infrastructure and simultaneously implement the ITS because you cannot wait for a longer time than the user acceptance. As Ravi Kumar rightly pointed out, the culture of accepting the technology and the culture of having the lane discipline & traffic discipline also has to be inculcated. Then, the lack of a regulatory body has to be looked into. There has to be a single authority for technology development and standardisation.

We need to concentrate on three issues:

1. National policy – Indian ITS Policy – which should have an architecture at national level, regional level, state level, city level and an organizational level (traffic police, etc.). All the stakeholders like MoRTH, MoUD, DIT, municipal corporations, urban development authorities, traffic police, etc., should play a critical role at this platform.
2. The ITS Technology and Standardisation Monitoring Authority: Since several technologies are available, they have to be judged according to local suitability – we need not reinvent the wheel but we have to check what technology is suitable to our Indian conditions and to our mixed traffic conditions before adopting a technology.
3. The R&D and the demonstration project.