Ministry of Urban Development Ropes in IIT Delhi and IIT Chennai in Urban Transport Planning
Ministry of Urban Development has decided to rope in some of the premier technological institute of the country in the planning of urban transport. To begin with the Ministry signed MoUs with IIT Delhi, IIT Chennai, NIT Warangal and CEPT University Ahmedabad for setting up of Center of Excellence for Urban Transport Planning and Development here today. These institutes would work in the area of urban transport design, planning and development of intelligent traffic system, management of BRT and other aspects of urban transport.
Signing MoU with the representatives of the institutes, Dr. M. Ramachandran said that it is envisaged that these centres shall become resource institutions to deal with Urban Transport Planning and Development. Although the financial assistance would be provided for first four years, they would provide technical assistance to the ministry in its function in the field of urban transport on an ongoing basis. These COEs would focus on applied research, run post graduate programmes to meet the requirement of highly skilled professional in the field, impart training to the officer of Central and State governments, publish research paper and brought out work as repository of data base/information on urban transport practices in the country, he said.
These centers of excellence have been assigned specific areas of focus. The center of excellence at IIT-Delhi would work in areas of Public Transit Planning, design and optimization with special focus on BRT, Integration of urban planning, traffic flow, use of ITS, impact/benefits to environment including NMV and Road Safety factors in Urban areas.
The centre of excellence at IIT-Chennai would work in areas of ITS application in Urban Areas, Urban Transport Systems Planning and Urban Transportation Infrastructure Management. The centre of excellence at NIT-Warangal would work in areas of A Strategy for improving Mass Transit Patronage, Modeling Urban Growth Landuse-Transport Integration, and Development of Capacity Analysis for Urban Streets, ITS based Traffic & Road Safety Mangement System and Modeling & Mapping Environmental Pollution. The centre of excellence at CEPT University-Ahmedabad would work in areas of Land use-Transport Integration, Transit Oriented Development, BRT planning and management, Fiscal tools for Urban Transport Management, Transit Impact Assessment, Social and Environmental aspects of urban transit and Sustainable Urban Transport.
The Ministry proposes to support such centers of excellence at other Institutions of National repute so that existing gap in capacity at the level of researchers, specialists, policy makers and executers of various projects related to urban transport could be bridged and ever growing challenges in the field of urban transport could be turned in to opportunity.
The Ministry of Urban Development has allocated total grant of Rs.31.31 crore to these institutes which would be distributed in span of four years. Out of the sum, Rs.7.83 crore have already been disbursed.
***
NCJ/SR
(Release ID :62692)