Monday, February 13, 2012

Centre to fund project reports for intelligent transport system - Hubli Included

Source: The Hindu

The Union Urban Development Ministry will fund 80 per cent of the cost of preparing master plan/ detailed project report for intelligent transport system (ITS) in important cities across the country, including those in Karnataka.

A senior Ministry official announced this at the concluding session of a seminar on ITS jointly organised by UDD, governments of Japan and Karnataka here on Friday. Karnataka was keen on implementing ITS initially in three cities — Mysore, Bangalore and Hubli-Dharwad.

“Let the experience in these cities be pilot projects as Karnataka has been the role model for other,” the official said.

The seminar was attended by many big names in the field of electronics from Japan, which is keen on implementing ITS in India, particularly the southern States.

Addressing these companies, the official said that low-cost technology is abundantly available to develop ITS. “If you are keen on implementing ITS in India, you should deploy low-cost technology. The companies will not lose anything because the volumes of deployment are very high,” he said.

At the same time, the companies should explore to make the best utilisation of the existing infrastructure such as mobile telephone network, he suggested.

Also, the companies should be prepared to set up manufacturing units in India by creating Indian subsidiaries, as the country is keen on developing indigenous technology as well as creation of employment.

On the role of Japan International Cooperation Agency, which has been funding various projects in India, he urged the agency to fund certain pilot projects of ITS in India, to test the proof of concept.

The agency may fund preparation of detailed project reports and support the national architecture for ITS which is being developed by UDD. The next phase of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, which may be launched this year, will include funding ITS.

Commissioner, Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT), Karnataka, V. Manjula, said that a few initiatives of ITS are being adopted in the State, including B-TRAC in Bangalore and the World Bank-funded ITS in Mysore. She said that integration of information and communication technology with the transport infrastructure, vehicles and users, will help people to make more informed travel choices even as it helps improve traffic flow.

Throughout the day, representatives from Japanese companies Nippon Koei, ITS Japan, Zero-Sum Wireless Solutions, East Nippon Expressway Company, Toshiba, Hitachi, Nagoya Electric Worksco, Mitsubushi Heavy Industries and Toyota Tshusho Electronics made presentations on different aspects of ITS.

Yasuhiro Okumura from Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and Taro Okawa from JICA were present.

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