CDGK-NED Varsity sign MoU for better traffic management research

December 25, 2010
By Irfan Aligi

KARACHI: The City District Government Karachi (CDGK) and the NED University of engineering and technology have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for utilization of its Command and Control Center for the improvement of traffic flow and development of intelligent transportation system (ITS) for the city.

City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal and NED University Registrar Engineer Javed Aziz Khan signed the MoU at a ceremony held at Karachi Water and Sewerage Board Head Office on Monday.

On the occasion, the city nazim exchanged his views while appreciating CDGK’s traffic engineering and operational infrastructure said that the research work on behalf of the NED University would besides providing the recommendations and remedies to cope up with these issues for better traffic management system in the metropolis help identify the traffic problems and causes of traffic management failure.

City nazim added that the digital vigilance facilities at the Command and control centre could play pivotal role toward the traffic flow management diligently and reducing traffic congestion on major avenues and supplementary arteries.

He hoped that hope that with the coordination of universities especially professional educational institutions, traffic problems could be identified and resolved with appropriate remedy.

He regretted that despite billions of rupees have been spent on traffic engineering, however, problems continued to persist owing to absence of enforcement and lack of due action on behalf of Capital city traffic police against traffic rules violations.

He said that unity of command was the key to solution of city’s problems. CDGK has established Pakistan’s first car parking plaza with modern facilities but hundreds of vehicles were still seen parked in no parking zones.

He said majority of the traffic problems were related to management and big cities have resolved them through mass transit system (MTS) but the CDGK was lacking resources complete MTS as it requires billions of dollars. So, federal government could take up the task in the city.

According to the MoU researchers from NED University would gain access to the Command and Control Center while Corridor-III would be used as NED-CDGK Road Lab for research and development of ITS based traffic management system.

It is pertinent to mention that the ITS was a research project of the NED University of Engineering and Technology and the University of Mississippi, USA under USAID.