Transport dept introduces Intelligent Transport System

Suvendu Adhikari, the state transport minister, inaugurated the vehicle tracking system and automated fare collection system on Friday morning. He said that there would be no question of incurring any sort of loses against a trip of a bus with introduction of the two online-based systems those are steps towards an “Intelligent Transport System (ITS)”.

It is learnt that the step to install biometric attendance recording system in offices of the department would be taken to ensure so that all employees enter offices on time, which has to be made mandatory to ensure that common people get better service.

The introduction of the vehicle tracking system on Friday will help in monitoring movement of a bus from the command and control centre set up in the office building of CSTC. Initially, 632 buses of CSTC can be tracked using the system. All the buses are fitted with a gadget containing a GRS enabled SIM card. It helps to track almost “real-time” location of a bus on its route. It will help to ascertain whether a bus is stopping at all the stoppages, going up to the terminal points of its route or if it is remaining stranded at a point without any proper reason.

At the same time, the introduction of automated fare collection system at all the eleven depots will help in real time monitoring of revenue collection. From now onwards, fare collection will be done using Electronic Ticketing Machine (ETM). Conductors in buses will be carrying an ETM connected through GPRS with the control room. Thus an operator sitting in the control room will get real time statics on the exact count of passengers travelling in a bus at a time as well as number of tickets issued in every trip. The same system will be implemented in buses run by other transport corporations as well for “strong vigilance on the fare collection process”.

Smart cards will also be introduced for commuters soon. A passenger carrying a smart card just needs to press his or her card on the ETM with the conductor to get a ticket. Passengers who will not be having a smart card will get an ETM generated ticket after paying the fare in cash.

Step has also been taken to set up a ticket punching machine at Millennium ghat where thousands of commuters need to get tickets every day.