1 CRIS Seminar 2015

Rail Transportation and Smart Cities

CRIS day seminar was held on 1st July 2015 at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The topic for this

edition of annual seminar was ‘Rail Transportation and Smart Cities’.

In the august presence of distinguished guests from Railways, PSUs and senior officers from CRIS;

the programme began with the lighting of lamp by Member Traffic, Railway Board, Member

Mechanical, Railway Board, Member Electrical, Railway Board, Additional Member (IT), Managing

Director/CRIS, Director Operations/CRIS, and Director PS/CRIS.

Convenor of the Seminar was Shri SS Mathur, GM/CC CRIS, who gave the welcome address and gave

a brief introduction of the empanelled speakers.

The line-up of experts in the field of Urban Development and Smart Cities were:

1) Shri Shailesh Pathak, ED Bhartiya Group, with experience in Government of India as an IAS

officer, in microfinance and in urban development in South Asia

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2) Dr MP Jaiswal, Dean and Professor (Information Management), MDI Gurgaon; an expert in e-

Governance and IT systems in Indian Railways

3) Dr BVL Narayana, Director (Passenger Services), CRIS, Fellow at IIM/Ahmedabad and an

expert in urban transportation

4) Dr Ashwani Kumar, General Manager (Passenger Reservation Systems), CRIS and former

fellow with Future Urban Mobility Group at SMART, the Singapore-MIT alliance for Research

and Technology

5) Shri Anirudh Gupta, General Manager, NISG, an expert in e-Governance and Urban renewal

GMs of CRIS along with senior technical staff had an enlightening experience listening to the

speakers.

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Role of ‘Guided’ Transportation in Smart Cities

Shri Pathak talked about Personal Rapid Transport (PRT), which allows nonstop travel and is

completely automated.

SkyTran is third generation PRT that uses magnetic levitation. It has highest energy efficiency and

had huge cost advantage.

According to him, through SkyTran 30 minutes travel is possible anywhere to anywhere to make out

our cities really Smart.

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Smart Cities in Dedicated Freight Corridor

Prof Jaiswal talked about 5 Dimensions of Smart City which included 1) Smart Waste Management 2)

Smart Utility Management 3) Smart Governance 4) Smart Safety & Surveillances 5) Smart

Transportation Management

He further suggested the 6th

Dimension of a Smart City:

1. Use of Smart Planning and Smart Policy formulation from the beginning

2. Use of Systems Dynamics Modelling to avoid failures and prolonged delays

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Smart cities – role of land based Rail Transport

Dr BVL Narayana emphasised the two key points:

1. Investments in expanding capacities of land based rail systems are essential for development

of effective and productive urban agglomerations.

2. Smart cities are realizable when this foundation exists

He discussed the issues in urban development with a specific case study of Bangalore city.

According to him the solution lies in:

1. Investments in rail capacity

2. Linking these investments to last mile road development for both goods and passenger

transport

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Mass Transit, Last-mile Issues and Analytics

Dr Ashwani Kumar proposed the last-mile inclusive transit planning approach.

According to him, development of mass transit, widely considered an essential part of the solution,

is necessary, but not sufficient. Commuters require a fast, cheap and comfortable door-to-door

solution.

He suggested station-wise improvements in walking, cycling and feeder bus/ para-transit

improvements based on Last-mile indices

He concluded with the following key pointers:

1. Need for scenario-based, network wide last-mile inclusive transit planning

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2. Increasing use of data to measure and understand Last-mile requirements

Railroad, transport, urbanization – a perspective

Shri Anirudh Gupta spoke about Urban Growth, potential areas of convergence between urban

development and Railways and core technologies that may act as common enablers.

He observed that the systems need to be designed for provisioning of an end-to-end integrated e-

Governance solution.

According to him the key take-a ways were:

For Infrastructure adjacencies -

1. Urban areas surrounding the Railroad Stations/heads

2. Railroad tracks - home to significant number of urban poor

For Technology adjacencies -

1. Accounting systems

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2. Geo-spatial Information Systems

Audience that included senior technical members from CRIS had enriching experience which was

highlighted by the standard of question put forward to the panel during questions and answers

session.

Shri S S Mathur moderated the Q & A session. The audience were provided the twitter handle

#CRISSeminar2015 for posting their queries and comments which were selected online and put

forward to the panel by the moderator.

As a small token of thanks and appreciation, mementoes were given to all panel members.

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Finally, a vote of thanks was given on behalf of organizing committee, by Shri Ankur Rastogi.

List of Committee members for CRIS seminar 2015

1. Shri BVL Narayana Director PS

2. Shri SS Mathur GM/CC

3. Shri Chander Shekhar CM/Rules

4. Shri Raghvendra Sharma PPE/CMS

5. Shri Gaurav Suri Dy Manager/RMG

6. Shri Raman Arora PE/FOIS

7. Shri Anil Kumar PE/ICMS

8. Shri Kailash Chaudhary SSE/PRS

9. Shri Ankur Rastogi PE/FOIS

10. Shri Manoj Malik AM/FOIS