The road transportation is getting a tremendous boost in India through the high-speed national highway and rural road network programmes being implemented and further planned.
This is an opportune moment, but a critical time, to frame policies and strategies that will support development of technologies, systems and services that impart maximum safety and efficiency to the movement of people and goods through this network. It must be at par with the technology standards adopted the world over.
This requires a national/regional framework to be made to guide development of technologies and services that promote maximum safety and efficiency while at the same time delivering "reasonable" profits to industry.
This has not been an easy task anywhere, but determined work on it is bound to get results, and there are examples of private-public initiatives from many developed countries.
Persistent efforts and innovative public-private partnerships have been able to make dramatic improvements in road safety as seen in Europe and Japan and secured a very high level of public appreciation and support to road safety issues.
The eSafety programme in Europe and the VICS in Japan are two outstanding examples.
In addition, with technology systems and services becoming globally interoperable, staying abreast with international standardization activities and developments is also very important.
AITS, India was working for the past three years on 'ITS AWARENESS' among the key Ministries and decision makers. The 7th Asia-Pacific Conference & Exhibition on ITS (AP2005) held in New Delhi during 9-11 August 2005 contributed greatly towards bringing ITS firmly in the vision of Indian Government Departments, Industry and Academia.
It evoked great interest and commitment towards setting agenda of safety, efficiency and sustainability for the development of transportation systems in India, and also simultaneous pilot deployments of ITS projects in urban and regional context in the entire Indian sub-continent.
The Indian Ministers of Science & Technology, Shri Kapil Sibal; Heavy Industries, Shri Sontosh Mohan Dev; and Urban Development, Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad; visited the exhibition and interacted with the participants.
Key officials from the Telecom Ministry, National Highways Authority, Delhi Transport, Bangalore Transport and Mumbai Regional Authorities also participated.
The endorsement and support of the Malaysian Minister for Works, with the 34-strong delegation from Malaysia was very encouraging.
His speech on the studies and plans leading to the development and deployment of ITS in Malaysia was very lucid and offers a very good case study for developing countries.
MoU's to undertake joint ITS research, studies and projects were signed between AITS, India and Ertico (ITS Europe), Taiwan and Korea.
These are aimed at promoting greater cooperation on ITS between India and these countries.
AITS India looks forward to presenting some concrete programmes and proposals undertaken as a follow-up to these MoU's soon.
There were 17 stalls taken up at the exhibition: Taco MobiApps Telematics Ltd.; Media partners; ST Engg, Singapore; Itramas, Malaysia; Efkon; 'Best of ITS', USA; TIFAC (Technology Information & Forecasting assessment Council), India; ITS Japan; Kapsch; ESRI, India; IBI Srishti; IIT, Mumbai; Delhi Transport and BSNL, India.
Eighteen sessions were conducted of which there were four Executive Sessions, eleven Technical Sessions and three Special Sessions
These covered a range of issues for the progress of ITS, new and in-use products and technologies, electronic payment systems, organizational and institutional issues, infrastructure requirements, like GIS, GPS, telecom, etc, case studies, especially from Japan and China.
The number of delegates from various countries included:
1. Japanese 24
2. Korean 21
3. Malaysian 35
4. Taiwan 20
5. China 04
6. Singapore 09
7. Europe 07
8. UK 01
9. USA 05
10. Australia 03
11. New Zealand 01
12. Indian 150
AITS, India thanks all delegates and participants for their support and participation.
We look forward to a much stronger participation the next time to take India and south Asia region 'Towards New Horizons' of ITS development and deployment.
Amitabh Bajpai
President, AITS, India
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