Shared transit a fix for traffic bottlenecks in cities: experts

 
At the 10th Urban Mobility India Conference cum Exhibition and CODATU-XVIII Conference, shared mobility was declared an emerging mode of transport that could ease traffic congestion. Shared mobility should be an unavoidable part of urban planning, experts opined.
Speaking at the meet, Amit Singh, co-founder of OLA cab service, said ride-sharing had revolutionised transportation in India. “With more people who work or live in busy urban pockets using ride-sharing services, including cab-pooling and van-pooling, traffic congestion at several areas have eased,” Mr. Singh said, adding when the private cab services were launched in India, it was unthinkable that customers would be willing to share rides.

“Now, people travel together as they budget their rides that has decongested the city roads to some extent,” Mr. Singh explained.
At city’s IT corridor, car-pooling started as early as in 2005. In the last decade, even apartment and commercial complexes in the area have been encouraging car-pooling to prevent parking congestion, experts who spoke at a panel on share mobility at the three-day conference said.
The experts asked investors to fund alternative transit services, including paratransit, shuttles and microtransit, in India’s smart cities.
While paratransit helps people with disabilities to travel comfortably, microtransit, functional in some developing countries, includes the modes of transport operated by private parties for shared transit.
The paratransit system follows a loose route to help disabled persons get dropped at their place of choice instead of following the rigid public transport route.
Amit Singh, co-founder of Shuttl, a shared transit network, asked the policy-makers to consider such cost-effective, easy transit systems as important as public bus services.