The Andhra Pradesh capital region is going to have a Mega City Transport Plan (MCTP) covering Amaravati, which is an Urban Notified Area, Vijayawada city, and Mangalagiri and Tadepalli towns in the coming months.
It is being drafted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in tune with the State Government’s vision to put in place an eco-friendly and sustainable transport system.
Besides, the Comprehensive Traffic and Transportation Study (CTTS) in the new capital region, being done by the JICA, of which the MCTP is a major component, has a regional transport plan and separate plans for the nine urban local bodies, namely, Guntur, Vuyyuru, Ponnuru, Tenali, Sattenapalli, Gudivada, Nandigama, Nuzvid, and Jaggaiahpeta.
In all, the CTTS comprises a blueprint for the entire capital region that spans 8,603 square kilometres, including 217 square kilometres capital city area and 16.94 square kilometres of the seed capital.
According to official sources, the CTTS, also called Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP), will mainly have high-speed sub-urban railways (can be a metro railway or a cost-effective alternative) and electric buses.
It is in the area of electric mobility that the A.P. Government is keen on and, to some extent, succeeded in catching the attention of companies like Tesla and Google, which promised to share the latest technologies.
But, for these grand plans to fructify, a senior official in the government said the existing road network has to be vastly improved.
The transport system is to be a combination of roads and railways, to save on time and costs.
Signal system
An elevated busway can be a solution for the time-being as it is cheaper compared to a full-service metro railway, but it should be scalable.
The signal system proposed in Vijayawada by Nippon Signal is a step towards giving the MCTP a tangible shape.
The Japanese company has already devised a mechanism for it on the basis of a survey done at 105 traffic intersections in the city.
Capacity-building is also a part of the CTTS, whose objective is to draft a Smart Transport Master Plan (STMP) for the capital region. Basically, JICA is going to ensure that the STMP is intelligent and rational, requiring the government to get its plans and execution part right.
