Niti Aayog to form panel for 'intelligent system' to make road travel safer and faster

Niti Aayog will form a 17-member panel that will also comprise representatives from ministries, states and the industry to explore, study and suggest steps to bring in an intelligent transport system for roads, an official familiar with the development told Moneycontrol.

The panel’s mandate will be to suggest ways to make roads safer and commute in cities and towns easier.

The panel on ‘National Intelligent Transport Systems’ will have 12 permanent and five non-permanent members. The committee will have three working groups.

The permanent members will have officials from Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and the Bureau of Indian Standards. State road transport undertakings of two states — Karnataka and Tamil Nadu — will also have officials representing them in the panel.

One representative from the International Road Federation, with which Niti Aayog has signed a Memorandum of Understanding for forming a policy on transportation systems, will also be part of the panel, the official said.

The panel will study various information and communication technologies being implemented in cities across the world to make daily commutes faster and safer, the official said. This includes signalling and sensing technologies.

An intelligent transport system, already implemented and being further developed in advanced countries, is useful in many ways. It is of particular relevance to countries with high urban population or those where there is steep migration to urban areas, India being one such nation.

It is possible to deploy one or more technologies, each useful in its own way, to have an intelligent system on the roads.

With such a system in place, it is possible to have varying speed limits during different times of the day as per the traffic flow. Japan has installed sensors on its highways to notify motorists of a car that is stalled ahead on the same route.