Success stories Pune Smart City Development Corporation Limited (PSCDCL) on adopting and implementing Smart Mobility Solutions

Pune Smart City is the first to develop Urban Mobility Lab for smart mobility solutions for Pune and has huge potential to be replicated across Indian cities. Its objective is to be among the lighthouse cities in India that shows the way forward for other cities. This Lab projectinvolves the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) of the United States, and eight automotive companies. The lab aims to develop innovative mobility solutions for Pune’s traffic, transport and road infrastructure issues. Solutions from the ‘Light House’ project would be tested in Pune before being rolled out across the country — Mumbai, Hyderabad, Vishakhapatnam, Kochi and Bengaluru have been made scaling partners for the project.

Other Smart Initiatives for mobility under the Pune Smart City Development Corporation Limited are as follows:

Pedestrian Policy and Streets Programs: The policy is considered as a milestone to provide consistent, high-quality pedestrian infrastructure with an equitable allocation of road space.

Around 100 km of streets across the city had been identified to redesign with wide, safe and continuous footpath since the inception of the plan in 2016 which would be done in two phases. Eminent Urban Designers in the country are involved in designing the pedestrian infrastructure in the localities like the Old City, Deccan Gymkhana and Jangali Maharaj and Fergusson College Roads, Satara and Solapur Roads, and Sinhagad Roads. Lakshmi Road, a shopping destination in Pune has been proposed to design as Pedestrian Friendly Street to provide an international quality experience to shoppers.

Residents around 1.5 km of streets in Aundh-Baner-Balewadiwould have well-designed and pedestrian friendly streets.

Pune was once a cycling city but the number of personal vehicles has skyrocketed in recent years, at the cost of bicycles, leading to increasing pollution levels and congestion. Bicycling share in Pune’s transportation scenario has now dwindled down to 9 percent, for which Pune’s Comprehensive Mobility Plan has set a target of 25 percent. This is aimed to be achieved through a proper plan.

Bicycle Plan: Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has hired a professional consultant to create the Pune Bicycle Plan which will include dedicated bicycle tracks, bicycle parking, signal priority for bicycles to make the cycling safe and attractive in Pune. Pune Cycle Plan is part of the efforts by the Pune Municipal Corporation to transform transportation in the city. PMC is also committed to improvements in footpaths, the design of streets, public transport, and traffic management. The Pune Cycle Plan was prepared in 2016 to help make Pune a cycle-friendly city. Towards this, significant progress has been made and a 300-km bicycle track in the city has already been constructed.

Traffic Management practices by Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL)

Bhubaneswar has emerged as one of the fast-growing, important trading and commercial hub in the State and Eastern India. The fast-paced development of the city has started putting adverse pressure on the ease of mobility in the city.

Traffic Management has been identified as a key to enhance the mobility of citizens in Bhubaneswar. Bhubaneswar has about 300 intersections of which at present, 23 percent of intersections are signalized for smooth traffic movements. However, the existing signalized intersections are not optimally utilized. This is causing vehicle accumulation, delays at intersections and increased pollution at intersections.

To enhance the efficiency of the signalized intersections the city has proposed to have a coordinated traffic signal control system. This necessitates the installation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Control System at signalized intersections in the city. Considering the above, Bhubaneswar has recently procured the requisite technology of traffic engineering named Composite Signal Control Strategy (CoSiCoSt) developed by C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) – a research and development organization under the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.

Traffic Management practices by Bengaluru Smart City Limited (BSCL)

To improve the traffic management in Bengaluru Smart City, a prototype of an intelligent traffic management solution is currently being tested in collaboration with the Electronics City Township Authority (ELCITA). It will provide traffic information that is currently unavailable, and help improve the management of commuter traffic. It involves capturing video streams from several cameras and processing them using artificial intelligence so that typical traffic management tasks such as vehicle detection, traffic density estimation and control of traffic lights can be automated for real-time performance.