INTELLIGENT TRANSPORT SYSTEMS - INDIA

India, the second most populous country in the world, and a fast growing economy, is seeing terrible road congestion problems in its cities. Building infrastructure, levying proper taxes to curb private vehicle growth and improving public transport facilities are long-term solutions to this problem. These permanent solution approaches need government intervention. 

The Government of India has committed Rs.234,000 crores in the urban infrastructure sector. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), metro rails and mono rails are being built in different cities to encourage the use of public transport. But still there is a steep growth of private vehicles. Some cities like Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Delhi-NCR, with their sudden growths in the IT sector, also have a steep growth in population, further increasing transportation needs. Meeting such growth with infrastructure growth is seemingly in-feasible primarily because of space and cost constraints. Intelligent management of traffic flows and making commuters more informed about traffic and road status, can reduce the negative impact of congestion, though cannot solve it altogether. 

This is the idea behind Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). ITS in India, however, cannot be a mere replication of deployed and tested ITS in the developed countries. The non-lane based disorderly traffic with high heterogeneity of vehicles, need the existing techniques to be adapted to the Indian scenario, before they can be used. Thus ITS in the Indian context needs significant R&D efforts.

ITS applications

Indian traffic can benefit from several possible ITS applications. One set of applications is for traffic management.

• Intersection control - At intersections, deciding the total signal cycle and the split of green times among different flows, is one of the most basic traffic management applications.
• Incident detection - Pinpointing locations of accidents or vehicle breakdown is important to handle the emergency situations.
• Vehicle classification – Knowing what kind of vehicles, and in what proportions, ply a certain road stretch, helps to choose appropriate road width and pavement materials.
• Monitoring - Pollution and road quality monitoring are necessary for taking corrective measures.
• Revenue collection - Toll taxes for infrastructure maintenance and fines for rule enforcement need to be collected.
• Historical traffic data - Long term data helps to plan new infrastructure, calibrate traffic signal times, and add public transport and so on.

Another set of applications can aid the commuters on roads. 

• Congestion maps and travel time estimates -These help commuters in route selection. 
• Public transport information - Information about arrival of public transport helps in choice of travel mode and reduces wait delays.
• Individual vehicle management - Getting information about parking places or estimates of carbon footprint help owners of private vehicles.
• Accident handling – Emergency services after accidents are a vital necessity.

Traffic congestion is an important problem in Indian cities. The characteristics of Indian roads and traffic make the problem interesting to solve. There is scope for evaluating existing ideas in different and challenging traffic scenarios, innovate new solutions and empirically evaluate ideas in collaboration with public and private sectors.