Hyderabad Officials Ready Draft Plan for Intelligent Transport System

As reported by the New Indian Express: The master plan for an intelligent transportation system for the Hyderabad metropolitan area, a first of its kind in the country, will be implemented in in three phases spread over 10 years at a cost of Rs 1,180 crore ($189.3 million USD).

The draft master plan for ITS is ready and has been put up for public review by the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) for suggestions and objections.

For the first time, HMDA has initiated the ITS master plan for HMA, with an aim to reduce risk in transportation and traffic accidents, enhancing communication and response in emergency, reducing energy consumption and increasing efficiency with regard to reaching a particular destination.

Also they plan to increase national and regional economic output through better utilization of their transport facilities, reducing travel time and travel costs by providing reliable real time information through ITS, investing efficiently in traffic related infrastructure and road use, reduce cost of road management and enhance appropriate management of ITS data.

For implementation of the ITS pilot project, HMDA entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in April 2011. JICA’s consultants submitted the final draft master plan last month.

HMDA officials told Express that JICA’s study team, after conducting several surveys and traffic studies and collection of data, has identified issues and causes, and suggested measures to enhance safety, improve road environment, comfort in road usage and formulated the ITS master plan.

For implementing the project, JICA proposed 10 User Service Bundles that include traffic management and operation, public transport emergency, transport related electronic payment, road transport-related personal safety, weather and environmental conditions monitoring, disaster response management and coordination, ITS Data management, maintenance and construction management and law enforcement to be implemented in three phases at a cost of about `1,180 crore.

The first phase will cost about `150 crore ($24 million USD), the second phase (6 to 10 years) nearly `425 crore ($68 million USD)and the third phase (after 10 years) around `605 crore ($96.8 million USD).

As per the plan, the ITS will have 692 Automatic Traffic Counter-cum-Classifiers (ATCC) at 346 locations have been proposed, CCTVs (879 locations), Variable Messaging System (213), Traffic Signals (622), Pedestrian Signals (1,500), Flood Sensors (125), Weather Stations (63), Pollution Sensors (21), a Probe Car System that include buses, taxis and auto-rickshaws (3,750), electronic road pricing (10), lane control (20) and parking systems at 20 locations in HMR.