3rd UITP India Bus Seminar Bats For Electrification And Tech Innovation

The international seminar held on May 11-12 at New Delhi saw various stakehold-ers and transportation experts discussing in detail the Indian bus industry’s road-map to e-mobility and the role of technology innovation in building sustainable bus transport systems for cities.

- Dhiyanesh Ravichandran

 

How disappointing it is that any pictorial or graphic illustration of urban air pollution in our cities featured in newspapers and visual media purportedly show rancid exhaust smoke belching from State-owned city buses. An image that helps reinforce a perception that buses are an integral part of air-quality problem and hence warrant some zero-emission technology as messiah to offset the emission from bus transportation, rather than considering it as a solution capable of taking a large number of polluting cars off the city streets. A distorted understanding of the reality, indeed.

In fact, true to its ‘public transport’ credentials, buses are the real people movers in India, serving the masses in cities and towns. With the predictions that the urban population in the country is likely to grow to about 473 million in 2021 and 820 million by 2051 from 285 million in 2001, there is a greater need for efficient and sustainable public transport systems, especially buses. Unlike other urban transit networks like metro rail, buses can be cost-effective and more pragmatic for the immediate future, requiring less investments and restructuring of infrastructure.

While improved investments and partnerships among various stakeholders are needed to promote bus transport, buses have to pass the ‘test of fire’ with the help of growing technologies to be emission free, fuel efficient and as sustainable as possible. E-mobility is a step in that direction, although it is not the only means to achieve the aspired end, the others being use of cleaner fuels, hybrid technologies, etc. Moreover, the procedural and operational inefficiencies in traditional bus transportation must be won over, by leveraging the endless possibilities offered by ICT and IoT in the digital age.

Advancing bus transport with E-mobility