Intelligent Transport Systems for Indian Cities

Road traffic congestion is a recurring problem worldwide. In India, a fast growing economy, the problem is acutely felt in almost all major cities. This is primarily because infrastructure growth is slow compared to growth in number of vehicles, due to space and cost constraints. Secondly, Indian traffic being non-lane based and chaotic, is largely different from the western traffic. The difference can be understood fully only through experience, but some example scenarios can be seen at [1]. Thus, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), used for efficient traffic management in developed countries, cannot be used as it is in India. ITS techniques have to undergo adaptation and innovation to suit the contrasting traffic characteristics of Indian roads.

In this position paper, we present a comprehensive study of all available ITS systems,including both research prototypes and deployed systems. We next pose a set of interesting open research problems in the context of Indian ITS. Finally, we list a set of public and private organizations, that play a role in Indian traffic management and research, as meaningful collaboration between field practitioners and researchers is needed for efficient transfer of relevant technology. Though our paper focuses on the Indian traffic scenario because of our hands-on experience of working with it [2, 3, 4], many of the problems and solutions outlined in this paper, are relevant for other developing countries as well.