Draft Bill to streamline traffic in metros ready, to be sent to sates

New Delhi: In a move aimed at streamlining the management of vehicular movements to ease the traffic in metro cities, the government has finalised the draft of Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) bill to tame traffic chaos.

As per the draft bill, every metro city would have to establish the authority to manage movements of all kinds of vehicles within the city.

According a senior official, the draft bill is ready and it would be soon sent to states for their suggestions.

"The objective behind establishing such an authority is to organise movements of autorickshaw, buses, Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS), metro trains in cities. There is no dedicated authority to look into the deployment of vehicles on city roads, which leads to frequent traffic snarls," the official said, adding that once the authority is in place, it would help in easing the traffic in cities.

As per the UMTA draft bill, neither buses nor small vehicles would be allowed to operate on Metro routes.

"Every city has its traffic management system including deployment of vehicles to provide last mile connectivity to daily commuters. It's been found that availability of passenger carrying vehicles such as sharing autos are available in abundance in those areas of the city which have more commuters, while the areas having less travellers have lesser availability of vehicles," the official told Millennium Post.

"The idea behind setting up of an authority is to manage the availability of public transport system even in those areas where there is lesser number of daily commuters. The proposed authority would be tasked to streamline the traffic as well public transport system to better the last mile connectivity in every part of the city," the official said.

"Given that public transport is a state subject, the Centre would not mandate them to adopt the bill. The plus point with this draft is that the states wishing to operate Metro trains would have to establish the UMTA," the official said, adding that metre-based autos and taxis have been excluded from the list of vehicles under UMTA.