KSRTC finds place in national ITS panel

The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) has achieved importance in the national transport arena by finding a place in the committee constituted by the Union Ministry for Urban Development for monitoring the implementation of Intelligent Transport System (ITS) in eight Indian cities, including Hubballi-Dharwad.

Mysuru was the first city in the country to launch ITS or Mitra (Mysuru Intelligent Transport) three years ago with majority funding from the World Bank. Recently, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) also launched ITS for its operations in Bengaluru. ITS is also in force in a cluster in New Delhi.

Two-day workshop

Eight cities — Hubballi-Dharwad, Indore, Navi Mumbai, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Bhopal and Ahmadabad — are in the process of launching ITS for their city bus services.

It was resolved at the two-day Knowledge and Experience Exchange Workshop — ITS in City Bus Public Transport — organised for the representatives of transport corporations from the eight cities that concluded on Tuesday, to form the committee.

R.K. Mishra, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, attended the workshop. Representatives from the World Bank and international transport experts also attended the event.

Since KSRTC was involved in the pilot launch of ITS in Mysuru, it has been made a member in the committee that will oversee the implementation of ITS in these cities. There are also other entities which have been made members of the committee, including the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System Ltd.

There were several sessions at the workshop where ITS experts spoke about the experiences in their countries and cities.

Key challenges

There was a session on key challenges and lessons learnt from planning, procurement, deployment of Mysuru ITS, getting value from ITS investments — learning through the Mysuru case and deriving benefits from Mysuru ITS.

There were sessions on Latin American experience with using ITS; Chinese experience with using ITS; how ITS improved bus system management internationally and ITS for urban bus systems. Also, another session on how ITS was improving bus system management in India, was conducted.

There were panel discussions with participants debating on what other cities need to focus on to make the services better and dependable. Bus services in Mysuru were brought under ITS or Mysore Intelligent Transport (Mitra) in November, 2012. The system gives the arrival time of buses on intra-city routes, reducing the waiting time of commuters at bus stops.

GPS devices

Under ITS, information on the arrival time of buses at a particular bus stand will be displayed on electronic displays put up at the stop. The entire fleet of intra-city service buses in Mysuru will be fitted with GPS devices and the buses will be tracked by technicians for providing real-time data.

Mysuru was the

first in the country to launch ITS or Mitra (Mysuru Intelligent Transport)