CHENNAI: The Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA) is planning to consolidate data regarding city’s transport and road systems at an estimated cost of Rs 146.7 crore.
Consulting firm KPMG has prepared a detailed project report that aims to bring together data from more than 30 government departments, including the traffic police, Metro Rail, the bus corporation, Metro Water and Tangedco on to a single connected system, replacing the current practice of each department maintaining separate records. The rollout is planned in three stages, beginning in the older, central parts of the city before expanding to the wider metropolitan area.
The project has six components, working as a shared data platform that consolidates maps, road details, water and power line locations, and public transport routes from across departments into one system. Alongside it is a coordination tool that allows departments to plan and track infrastructure projects jointly instead of independently, official sources said.
Before drafting the plan, the consultant held discussions with all 31 departments involved to assess the data each holds and their readiness to share it, and CUMTA officials visited Singapore to study a comparable system in operation there. The report found agencies such as CUMTA, Metro Rail and the Greater Chennai Corporation are well prepared to integrate with the new system, while local traffic police units and some smaller municipal bodies require more preparatory work, sources said.
The report states the platform will not replace or duplicate existing departmental systems; it is designed to connect with departments’ existing data rather than generate new data of its own, an official said.
The report also benchmarked Chennai’s plan against similar road-digging management systems used in Delhi, Bengaluru, Kerala and other states, and found no other Indian city currently combines all the features Chennai is proposing, including automatic flagging of conflicts between departments and the routing of traffic police approvals through the same system.
Highly placed sources said the final draft of the DPR will be discussed by the review committee next week before being submitted to the government.