The CEPT University’s Centre of Excellence in Urban Transport is mulling over extending its flagship 10-week training programme for in-service professionals called “Leaders in Urban Transport Planning and Management” to international participants from next year.While outlining their two-year plan to the Centre next month, the CoE officials will submit a proposal to widen the scope of the programme that was launched last year.

The week-long programme that began on Sunday is a first-of-its-kind module in India that looks at urban transport and its management and is run jointly with the World Bank. Rs 4.3 lakh is being spent on each participant by the stakeholders.

Around 40 senior and mid-level professionals from railways, municipal corporations, urban development authorities and various state transport authorities from 25 cities will undergo a capacity-building programme at CEPT University.

“Urban transport is not only about engineering, roads and infrastructure, and operations like railways or state transport authorities, but includes footpaths, mobility and land use. Currently, there are no programmes in the country to address such issues. From next year, we propose to hold a global programme for 30 international participants. This will include an in-training programme, consisting of four modules, in which the participants will be required to spend three weeks out of their jobs at the workshop and undertake an international study tour as well,” says H M Shivanand Swamy, Executive Director of CoE Urban Transport, CEPT.

Of these participants, around eight were from the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC), Surat Municipal Corporations (SMC) and AUDA. The participants are guided by five world-renowned urban transport experts and CEPT faculty on cities and their urban transport-related issues. “This year, we will be focussing on studying Hong Kong that has come up with interesting metro and transit financing schemes and accessibility measures like pedestrian-elevated corridors in detail,” adds Swamy.

For completing the programme, participants have to come up with proposals for individual projects for their respective workplaces, which they will develop within the next five months under the guidance of a mentor from the CoE. Site visits to universities and urban authorities in Honk Kong, Singapore and Seoul are also scheduled. There they will be briefed on transport innovations.

“The programme has a good mixed bag of participants from various departments like roads, railways that helped in getting many perspectives in planning urban transport for a city. We will study and compare three cities in terms of different modes of urban transport they currently have and the problems dogging them,” says Neela Munshi, Senior Town Planner at AUDA (Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority) who is one of the participants of the programme.

Established in 2009 by the Ministry of Urban Development, the CoE is supported by the AMCand. Its mandate includes capacity-building in urban transport, HR development, knowledge anagement and technical assistance and advisory.

Source-http://www.indianexpress.com