Demography Of A City Is The Benchmark For Its Planning: Shafqat Khan

Mr. Bose opened the session with the question that what are the challenges faced in the respected states of the panelists regarding urban mobility and what can be the possible solutions for the same.

The panel was chaired by Manojit Bose, Chief Knowledge Officer, Pune Smart City Ltd. The panelists included Sanjay Garg, Leader-Capital Project, PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt Ltd, Nilkanth Poman, Chief IT Officer, Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, Dr. Shafqat Khan, Joint Resident Commissioner, Govt. of Jammu & Kashmir, Prashant Sirsek, General Manager-Admin & Project, Shimla Smart City Ltd.

Mr. Poman said that there are different aspects of urban mobility, the major challenge in our region is the public transport system. We need to have a multi-mode well-connected transport system.

"For that, the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation is coming up with electrical-buses where two major bus depots will have EV charging facility," he added.

Mr. Garg said that the concept of urbanisation is changing and we need to look at the 'socio-economic trends' to overcome the major challenges.

"We are using our major fund in urban mobility project," said Prashant Sirsek. He also told that the major problem is junctions in Shimla and it further leads to traffic congestion.

"We have to work on ground reality, the possible initiative as of now are bigger tenders for junction improvements, pedestrian mobility, bike sharing scheme and vertical mobility," he added.

Moving forward, Mr. Khan said, "The demography of a city is the benchmark for its planning. We want to convert our city into a non-motorable walking city, so that the tourist can enjoy every suitable view. We are also bringing in 60 e-buses in Srinagar and Jammu respectively and working on building the model of pedestrian-bicycle lane."