Volvo Buses today announced the winners of the Second Season of the Volvo Sustainable Mobility Award. EMBARQ India and India Urban Space Foundation were declared joint winners, while Praja got the Runner Up prize for their respective projects. Special Recognitions were conferred upon a collaborative effort between Ride-A-Cycle-Foundation with its partners as well as a Group from IIT Madras. The awards were given at the 4th Edition of the Volvo Nobel Memorial Seminar 2012 held in Bangalore today.
The Volvo Sustainable Mobility Award has been instituted to recognise outstanding efforts in the broad area of sustainability. The entries were assessed by a jury comprising of subject matter experts and was chaired by Shri. Shankaralinge Gowda, Principal Secretary, Horticulture Department, Government of Karnataka. The Volvo Sustainable Mobility Award carries reward money of INR 7,00,000 for the Winner and INR 3,00,000 for the Runner Up. The winners of this year’s award shared the prize money.
Volvo Buses instituted the Volvo Sustainable Mobility Award (VSMA) in 2011. This year, the response to this award was very encouraging and is evident from immense response in terms of the increase in the number of entries received for the award. Projects were received from a cross section of stakeholders including, NGOs & citizen groups, student groups and individuals.
Akash Passey, Senior Vice President – Business Region International, Volvo Bus Corporation and Chairman of the Board of Volvo Buses in India, said, “I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the winners and other participants for making this award a success. The response for the second season of Volvo Sustainable Mobility Award has been very encouraging and this is an indication of increasing inclination of various stakeholders and the society in general to develop & adopt sustainable transport solutions in the country. We look forward to many more innovations related to urban mobility in the next season of Volvo Sustainable Mobility Award.”
The winning entries for this year were The Hosur Road Corridor Improvement Project taken up by EMBARQ India and Project Tender SURE by India Urban Space Foundation.
The Hosur Road Corridor Improvement Project is a pilot project for improving the efficiency and quality of public transport services along major arterial roads in Bangalore. The main aim is to reorganise bus services from the existing Direct Services Model to the Connective System Model which will help in reducing the Number of Routes; Reduce Travel Times; and Improve Capacity.
Project Tender SURE is a ground-breaking project that tackles the chaos caused by poor planning of India’s urban roads – providing a systematic and disciplined way to address the details of design, procurement and execution of city roads. Tender SURE addresses areas such as planning of road networks, integration with various options of public transport, and enhancing the life cycle of the roads constructed, among others. The innovation of project Tender SURE is that it uses a multi-stakeholder approach for a successful implementation; creates a model that is easy to scale; and continues to offer technical support to those who implement its guidelines, throughout the entire process of road design and execution.
Namma Railu, a project by Praja has been declared the runner up. The aim of this project was to address the commuting needs of people in the peripheral areas of Bangalore in a cost efficient and timely manner. Praja has been working towards raising cognizance of the benefits of commuter rail services amongst citizens & various authorities as the necessary first step. Dept. of Urban land Transport (DULT), Government of Karnataka, which agreed to take up the project further.
A Group from IIT Madras received Special Recognition for their project aimed at developing models to develop and implement a passenger information system that can efficiently provide accurate, real time bus arrival time information under Indian traffic conditions. The team will also develop a kiosk application where the user can identify bus route numbers to a selected destination and obtain the arrival time for each of them.
Two projects aimed at promoting bicycle transport in Bangalore also received Special Recognition. These projects were a collaborative effort between Ride-A-Cycle-Foundation, Directorate of Urban Land Transport, UDD, Government of Karnataka, BBMP (Traffic Engineering Cell), and Gubbi Labs. The projects were aimed creating awareness among people to adopt bicycle as a mode of transport and help address issues of congestion and pollution. As part of this project, the group collaborated with other agencies to map, road networks in this area, demarcate dedicated lanes for cyclists and create awareness about this model among the target user groups. In the second initiative, a public bicycle sharing system was created specifically for the IISc campus in Bangalore.
October 29th, 2012
For further information, please contact...
Sridhari Chari sridhar.chari@volvo.com
Nilanjana Nangia +91 9986074334, nilanjana.nangia@bm.com
Volvo Buses India Private Limited
Volvo Buses has been in India for over 10 years and has the richest experience when it comes to high-performing bus applications. This, coupled with its state-of-the-art factory and overall profile of being a complete transport solutions provider, gives it a unique ability to be in the best position to understand the needs of the Indian market and configure products accordingly. Volvo Buses today operates across 13 cities in India, besides Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It is the second largest European brand with a strong presence in key markets in Asia. At present, there are about 5,000 Volvo buses operating in the SAARC region, both in the city and inter-city segments.