CCEA Clears Rs 1,789.52 Crore Traffic System for Delhi

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by the Prime Minister, cleared an Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS) to be put in place by the Delhi Police. The estimated cost, taxes included, is Rs 1,789.52 crore. The approval was announced under the heading One Network, Smarter Traffic, and it takes the capital towards traffic management that reads the road in real time instead of running on fixed clocks.

Size and schedule

The project takes in 42 identified traffic corridors of Delhi. Work is split into three phases spread over 24 months, and five years of operation and maintenance follow. Each phase begins only after the one before it has been measured against laid-down testing, commissioning, acceptance and performance parameters. On the ground the system will put up 1,092 Adaptive Traffic Control System installations and 1,029 enforcement locations.

Why Delhi needs it

The capital carries about 71 lakh active registered vehicles. Vehicle numbers have grown much faster than roads have been added, while regulation still leans heavily on fixed signal timings and on traffic staff stepping in by hand. The ITMS is meant to squeeze more out of the road space that already exists by letting traffic control respond to what is actually happening outside.

What the system will do

• Adaptive signals: signal timings change with the traffic of the moment and are coordinated along a corridor, cutting needless halts.
• Green corridors: ambulances and other emergency vehicles get priority passage through choked stretches.
• Faster response: congestion, slow-moving traffic and road incidents are spotted as they happen, so diversions come sooner.
• Commuter information: Variable Message Sign boards and digital platforms carry news of jams, diversions and parking, and may be shared with navigation services.
• Automated enforcement: red-light and stop-line offences, speeding, wrong-way driving, riding without a helmet or belt, illegal parking and phone use while driving are caught by machine. Analytics will also flag stolen, hot-listed and blacklisted vehicles, repeat offenders and vehicles tied to hit-and-run cases.

Who builds it

Regulation, enforcement and information will sit together on one platform through Traffic Command and Control Centres, backed by a secure data centre and disaster recovery setup, and built on open standards and application programming interfaces so it can be extended later. Delhi Police will execute the project through a Master System Integrator chosen by competitive bidding, with C-DAC as Project Management Consultant handling technical scrutiny, monitoring, validation and acceptance.