The Delhi transport corporation (DTC) is witnessing a cultural change these
days with the initiation of a number of IT projects. The corporation has now
computerized its season ticket renewal system thus reducing the waiting time for
citizens considerably. The facility available at its 24 centers is currently in
the process of being networked. This will enable citizens to go to any center to
renew their season tickets.
The season ticket facility is effectively reducing the waiting time for
citizens to a few seconds instead of standing in a queue for hours. The next
stage is to network the various centers so that the database can be accessed
centrally from any center. The department has already computerized its accounts
and payroll system.
The centers would be linked on a wireless LAN (WLAN) network. Antennas would
be installed at all the bus depots and the central database would be located at
Scindhia House. A feasibility study has been conducted and tenders for equipment
are to be floated shortly. An interesting aspect of this project was that the
expenditure to DTC was nil. The project has been leased to ECIL (Electronic
corporation of India limited) and the capital investment is expected to be
recovered from citizens. Employees whose services were made redundant due to
computerization have been deployed as conductors in the new fleet of buses.
Another project on the anvil is the automatic vehicle tracking and monitoring
system. The project will be partly financed by the Ministry of IT and
implemented by CMC. The system specification and requirements have been frozen
and trial runs are expected to be conducted in January. The project is expected
to cost Rs 4.5 crore and around 200 buses are expected to be in the trial run.
Eventually, the facility will be extended to its fleet of 4000 buses.
The GPS system will have three components: the GPS receiver, the radio
trunking system and the central monitoring system at the DTC headquarters. When
a vehicle has to be tracked, the message will be sent from the central base to
the satellites via the radio trunking sets and the GPS receivers. The satellites
will track the vehicle and send the exact details of the vehicle’s location
through the same route to the radio-trunking receivers which are loaded with
software to convert the data into the name of the exact location. This
information will then be relayed to the central base. Yet another project on the
anvil is the automatic fare collection system which will be executed jointly
with Delhi metro rail corporation.
Balaka Baruah Aggarwal/CNS In New Delhi