Nitin Gadkari inaugurates intelligent transport system on Eastern Peripheral Expressway: How new system will help make travelling easier and safer

Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday inaugurated an intelligent transport system {ITS} on the Eastern Peripheral Expressway to minimise traffic woes and enhance safety of commuters. The 135-km long six-lane expressway connects Haryana and Uttar Pradesh through Ghaziabad and Palwal. “It is a great event in the history of Indian infrastructure {development},” the road transport and highways minister said on the inauguration of the intelligent transport system {ITS}. Take a look at what this system entails and why it will be a boon for Indian commuters. ITS explained The ITS is a revolutionary state-of-the-art technology that will achieve traffic efficiency by minimising traffic problems, prompting efficient infrastructure usage, enriching users with prior information about traffic and reducing travel time as well as enhancing safety and comfort of commuters. The ITS can detect any accident and receive alerts to ensure that ambulance reaches the spot within 10-15 minutes. ITS involves automatic and real-time management of traffic signals based on estimations of traffic congestion and demand. The system is used very successful in Japan and Russia. The first mention of using ITS was in 2016 when a high-powered committee of the ministry of urban development had proposed it as a means to decongest the roads of Delhi. In the draft report, titled Decongesting Delhi, the committee had said that such a system would reduce the need for a policeman to be present on the spot while increasing flow of traffic. According to experts, the advantages of using an ITS are innumerable. It helps in: • Reduction in stops and delays at intersections • Speed control and improvement • Travel time improvement • Capacity management • Incident management Road safety in India Incidentally, the inauguration of the intelligent transport system on the Eastern Peripheral Expressway comes a day after Parliament was informed that a total of 1,16,496 road accidents occurred on National Highways {NHs}, including Expressways, in 2020. These accidents caused 47,984 deaths. In 2019, a total of 1,37,191 accidents had taken place on NHs, including Expressways, which resulted in 53,872 deaths, according to a written reply to the Rajya Sabha by Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari. A comparative analysis of the National Crime Records Bureau {NCRB} data from 2017 to 2020 shows that the number of lives lost per 100 road crashes was 35 in 2019, 34 in 2018 and 32 in 2017. This is also defined as the “severity of accidents” and an indicator of how safe or unsafe roads are. With inputs from agencies Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.