Focus on walking, cycling, people-friendly urban designing

Speaking at a special session on sustainable urban mobility options and first Mobility Plan Coordination Committee meeting here, international mobility expert Dr Dario Hidalgo from Bogota, Columbia said better public transport options would make cities healthier and happier.

The expert, who is Director, Integrated Transport, WRI Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities, also called for more use of walking, cycling and people-friendly urban designing so that the city dwellers would be less dependent on cars, so that the environmental sustainability would be an easier thing to manage in the long run. This would also make people healthy.

BDA Vice-Chairman Dr Krishan Kumar in his welcome address mentioned that low carbon mobility plan for Bhubaneswar shall look at multiple modes of transport to provide better, cleaner mobility options and not making the State Capital a car-dependant city.

He also said that the technology-empowered public transport as “Mo Bus’’ service in the city would provide comfortable, safer and smoother public transport alternatives like car rental service providers making the public service people-friendly and affordable in near future. By using mobile app commuters can have all the information on the bus service very soon. Integration of public bicycle sharing system with the bus service would also serve towards the LCMP target, he told.

Project Manager, SMART-SUT project, GIZ, Sarah Habersack in her inaugural address invited all stakeholders in the city to be proactive in creating an asset in form of urban transport.

The LCMP meeting was organised by the Housing and Urban Development Department, Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) and Deutsche Gesellschaft for Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) of the German Government.