Moneycontrol | Hyderabad to host three-day conference on urban transport challenges

Nov 03,2017

About 1,000 policy makers, including mayors and municipal councillors from the five southern states, administrators, experts, urban planners, researchers and technology and service providers from over 20 states and 25 countries will converge at the iconic HITEX City in Hyderabad for a three-day conference starting tomorrow to discuss issues, challenges and solutions related to transport and mobility in the cities and towns.

The theme of the conference is Intelligent, Inclusive and Sustainable Mobility.

Vice-President of India M Venkaiah Naidu will inaugurate the Urban Mobility India Conference and Expo tomorrow. Chief Minister of Telangana K Chandrasekhara Rao and Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri will also address the inaugural session setting the tone for deliberations over the next three days, ministry sources said.

Hyderabad Conference will deliberate on various components of the chain of urban transport from conceptualisation of urban transport projects, design, financing and execution. The broad themes to be discussed include; Mobility for All, Multi-modal Integration, Inclusive Planning, New Paradigms of Mobility, Smart Cities and Mobility, Electric Mobility, Shared Mobility, Linking Urban Transport and Environment, Informal Transport Systems, Using Urban Transport Planning as an Opportunity, Efficient and Sustainable City Bus Service Systems, Financial Planning for Urban Transport Projects, Land Value Capture and Transit Oriented Development, Metro Rail Policy etc, ministry sources said.

Hyderabad was decided as the venue for the tenth UMI Conference and Expo by M Venkaiah Naidu last year when he was the Union Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. Hyderabad is hosing this conference for the first time since UMI Conference was introduced in 2008. This conference is being organised jointly by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of Telangana and CODATU, a French Transport Institute.

Sustainable urban transport and mobility aims at integrating environmental concerns with transport planning so that urban residents are not deprived of quality air. UMI Conference is being organised  to further the objectives of the National Urban Transport Policy which lays stress on ‘moving the people rather than the cars’.

UMI Conference aims at promoting dissemination of information and exchange of ideas on urban transport and mobility issues and the best practices being followed in the cities across the world. At the Hyderabad conference, initiatives and experiences in respect of various aspects of urban transport of 86 cities including 36 foreign cities will be presented as case studies for detailed discussion.

Case studies of foreign cities to be discussed include Boudeau and Lyan (France), Lausanne (Switzerland), Lisbon (Portugal), Gaudalajara (Mexico), Curitiba (Barzil), Bangkok (Thailand), Santiago (Chile), Constantine (Algeria), Cape Town (South Africa), Rabat (Morocco), Dhaka (Bangladesh) etc.

Indian city case studies to be presented and discussed include three relating to Hyderabad viz., road safety aspects, transit oriented development and introduction of tram services besides parking policy, planning and implementation in Vijayawada, initiatives and experiences of Mysuru, Bengaluru, Chennai, Trivendrum, Varanasi, Lucknow, transport planning for Maha Kumbh Mela to be held in Allahabad in 2019, Indore, Bhopal, Amritsar, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chandigarh, Kolkata etc, sources said.

A total of 60 plenary, special and technical sessions will be held over the next three years for a detailed discussion on intelligent transport solutions, inclusive urban transport and sustainable urban transport planning.

Nine leading transport technology and service providers will display the latest technologies at the conference.