Govt inks pact with UK to revamp public transport

New Delhi: In a move aimed at revamping the public transport and augmenting passenger capacity by way of creating a sustainable public transport system, the Centre has on Wednesday inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Kingdom. According to the pact, the MoU would help in improving the overall public transport system in the country and passenger services, while promoting the use of high capacity buses in India.

The MoU is aimed at using the expertise of Transport for London (TFL), which is a local government body responsible for the transport system in Greater London, to revamp the public transport architecture in the country.

Speaking on the occasion, Minister of Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari said, "The country needs a good transport policy that promotes convenient and comfortable public transport system. An effective public transport system would be one that ran on electricity or other less polluting, indigenously produced fuels like methanol, ethanol and bio-diesel, which would not only reduce pollution but also be cost-effective."

"Effective road-based public transport is the key to economic growth of a developing country and growth in public transport has not been encouraging in the last few decades, which led to increase in the number of private vehicles on road," the minister said.

"It's the outcome of absence of viable public transport system that private vehicles on road have increased by more than five times in the last 15 years, while the increase in the fleet of the State Road Transport Undertakings (SRTUs) has seen a marginal increase of about 25 per cent," the minister said, adding that it's a result of creation of a successful public transport system in London that the city has not seen any increase in number of their private cars.

The TFL has set several milestones in improving the public transport system as it has created a strong and dependable public transport system and invented a unique system of operating buses in PPP model with over 17 operators under a single brand.

The most important work of TFL is operation and management of double-decker buses that provide high capacity with low road space requirement.

The MoU would help in enabling improved customer services, harness from scientific data analysis and implementing effective IT systems in the transport sector. It would also help in promoting digital transaction for ticketing, major procurement strategies including PPP models for operations, infrastructure maintenance strategies, etc.