Page 14 - Technology Roadmap Transportation

one stage of norms. Safety norms are also being introduced progressively in 2 wheelers as
well as cars, commercial vehicles, and buses with a hope to bring down the ever increasing
fatalities on road and then reversing the trend to achieve a “Zero Vision” of safety.

India, however, has a large population of old vehicles which need to be taken care of for
improving the environment. Inspection and Maintenance regime needs to be brought into
the system which will ensure health of all the vehicles running on road. This is one of the
urgent needs to realise our dream of better air quality and safety. The report discusses this
issue in detail.

Today, the whole world is heavily dependent on information and communication technology.
In road transportation “Intelligent Transport System” plays a vital role in achieving the goal
for better environment and improved safety. We need to leverage India’s strength in these
areas by introducing smart vehicles and smart road infrastructure which will tremendously
help in providing efficient, safe and sustainable road transport and also save enormous human
hours which are lost for ever. We have to get into this area without any delay as every day
the problem is going out of our hand for want of such enabling systems in India. Such systems
are deployed all throughout the developed world.

Electric Mobility has assumed a far greater importance all across the world and India has
also published its intent through National Electric Mobility Mission Plan. Several incentives
have been offered for manufacturing and using electric vehicles. Electric and hybrid vehicles
will contribute substantially in cleaning up air in the cities, lots of research are required in
the battery technology, battery management system, power electronics, controller, etc. This
is totally a new area for India and needs to be given a big thrust in the next 4~5 years to
realise its benefits.

This document looks into all these areas and highlights the short term, medium term and
long term plans which need to be taken up by us for future sustainable growth. We have been
addressing these issues in a fragmented manner in the past and to realise the full benefits of
such initiatives, it is essential to look at the sector in a holistic way to decide the action plan.

We cannot avoid looking at the Blue Sky Research areas including autonomous vehicles which
pose many challenges to our engineers in view of our unique situation involving motorcycles,
cars, trucks, buses, pedestrians, cyclists, etc. Importing just the solutions from abroad will not
be effective. We need to have unique solutions catering to our unique situation.

RAILWAYS
Railways in India was once the major mode of transportation catering to almost 55% of
the mobility needs. The share has gone down substantially as the growth of road transport
overtook the growth of railways. The report covers the progress of railway transport over
the last 70 years and highlights the need to concentrate more on this mode of transport.
Railways have by far very low emissions and energy requirement compared to automobiles.
In developed countries railways cater to almost 60% of freight transportation which eases
out the stress on highways. India needs to look at dedicated passenger and freight lines which
can bring efficiency and speed in this mode of transport. While the developed countries
like Australia have goods trains with about 680 wagons and 7.2 km long train, we still are
struggling with 58 wagons which put in severe constraints on the freight movement. Even

xii