Development of Intelligent Transportation System and Its Applications for an Urban Corridor During COVID-19

Transportation is a driving force behind economic development and well-being of all people around the world. An urban transport system is one of the most critical infrastructures for urban development. Impacts of a poor urban transport are manifested in terms of congestion, delays, pollution, accidents, high-energy consumption, low productivity of resources, community severances and inadequate access to the service. In urban areas, despite the construction of flyovers and roads, the roads continue to face traffic congestion, environmental pollution and lack of mass transportation facility resulting in heavy shift of commuters to intermediate and private vehicle ownership. Therefore, it is necessary to make transport system attractive and user friendly in terms of safety, reliability, travel time and comfort, which can be achieved using intelligent transportation system (ITS). This study has been intended to develop a methodology for development and operation of intelligent transportation system namely Presto ITS mobile application. The Android application, Presto ITS, developed works along with the Urban Traffic Data Management Centre to help reduce the congestion on the road networks by allowing the users to make informed decisions about route choices. This helps in reducing further inflow of vehicles in an already congested road network and thus allowing distribution of vehicles among the different routes resulting in lesser overall congestion. This system when installed on an overall city wide basis will drastically help in reducing the congestion and evenly distributed traffic.