Need to make public transport people friendly

 Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways  Nitin Gadkari has stressed upon the need for making the public transport people friendly, safe, affordable, accessible, cost effective and pollution free. The Minister also highlighted the need of implementing the ITS in the operation as well as the National Common Mobility Card in order to make its operation fully digitised and efficient.  According to the Minister,  States must increasingly adopt the alternative fuels in the operation of buses and  use  CNG, LNG, and ethanol blended fuels.  At the recent Meeting of Transport Development Council,  Minister Nitin Gadkari assured the states of his full support and cooperation in their endeavours to make public transport modern and efficient.  The States  must avail all the schemes  of the central government such as FAME-II to gradually shift to electric vehicles. There is need  for innovation by the states and  improvement in  the quality of buses and the public transport so that  the use of personal vehicles can be reduced.

  Union Minister of State for RTH Gen (Retd) Dr V K Singh also adocated the adoption of alternate fuels that  willreduce the vehicular pollution and  save the precious forex. He desired that Rules on Good Samaritan Guidelines would be speedily implemented by the States in letter so that people would readily come forward to help the accident victims.

Secretary (RT&H)  Giridhar Aramane   stated that  the Ministry has made several initiatives to mitigate the effect of Covid pandemic on Transport sector, such as providing financial assistance to States/UTs for sanitation of public transport, coordinating with Transport Associations to facilitate the movement of trucks for essential goods, suspending the collection of user-fee at all toll plazas and extending the validity of various documents related to transport till 31st March, 2021.

Joint Secretary Amit Varadan pointed  out the various initiatives such as  MoRTH sponsored scheme for setting up monitoring centres as per AIS 140 Specification in States, Accessible India Campaign for Public Transport,  Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines-2020, Voluntary Vehicle Scrapping Policy,  All India Tourist Vehicles Authorisation and Permit Rules, 2019, Scheme for cashless treatment of road accident victims and  alternate fuel regulations in the automotive sector.