If you are a daily commuter spending precious hours of the day stuck in traffic jams, or an implementer wondering why your city still suffers despite all your good efforts, or a policymaker trying to understand the context and extent of transport policies, VERCOS welcomes you to The Transportation Podcast. In this podcast, we explore the A to Z of transport, how it touches our daily lives and what steps we may take to make sure that the transport is safe, seamless, efficient and equitable.
In our 7th episode, Ms. Rachel Smith, enlightened us on the following topics: Poor life choices aka car ownership triggered by clever marketing. 7 steps towards decongesting our cities. What does it take to achieve behavioural change? Why tactical urbanism is a crucial step in city planning? What are cycling superhighways and why do we need it? In addition to the above discussion, as a gift to the listeners of The Transportation Podcast by VERCOS, Ms Rachel has issued a free copy of her book JAM-PACKED containing chapters from her book 'Decongestion'.
In our 6th episode, we welcomed Dr Paul Barter, policy analyst, researcher, trainer and podcaster on urban transport and parking. Dr Barter has worked on parking issues in many cities in Australia, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and India. Dr Barter enlightened us on many important aspects of parking as how parking demand is different for an engineer and an economist, why on-street parking management is crucial for successful off-street parking operations, why off-street parking should be market-driven and should only be constructed by private players, what is the magic sauce of parking management, what are parking minimums and why they should be removed, how parking fuels social injustice and what would a good parking policy aim.
In our 5th episode, we hosted Prof. PK Sarkar, Former HOD of the Transport Planning Department (TPD) of School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. Prof. Sarkar went down the memory lane to relive his life as a student of SPA along with enlightening us why we are far from achieving the road safety targets set in 2015, why the Motor Vehicles Act 2019 must be enacted in the spirit, the methodology of accident data collection and identification of blackspots, the relation between vehicle speed and the probability of fatality and the capacity gaps at state levels to efficiently address the road safety issues.
Our fourth episode is dedicated to Women Safety in Public Spaces and Transit. Our guest Dr Kalpana Viswanath, CEO and co-founder Safetipin and Member, Global Network of Safer Cities of UN-Habitat enlightened us why it is difficult to collect data on harassment in transit, key factors which define women safety in public spaces, good practices in gender-friendly transport across the world, why women-friendly streets are safe for all and how lack of gender-friendly transport prevents women from accessing education and employment opportunities.
In our 3rd episode, we welcomed Mr Amit Bhatt, Executive Director, World Resources Institute. Mr Bhatt has about 2 decades of experience in the field of urban transport and he writes extensively on the issues of transportation and road safety. Mr Bhatt enlightened us on how our cities are inherently sustainable, how our fascination for cars can be compared to an epidemic, why is it necessary to challenge the perception towards pedestrians and NMT, the issue with our road-safety awareness programs and what HaryanaVisionZero by NASSCOMFoundation is all about.
Join us in our 2nd episode, as we welcome Mr Alok Jain to our studio. Mr Alok has been Director at the Octopus Cards, GM Marketing at 九廣鐵路 Kowloon-Canton Railway and Operations Director at the Kowloon Motor Bus Company. He is also an Assistant Professor at The University of Hong Kong - HKU. Mr Alok enlightened us on how a few data-driven campaigns way back in 2003 doubled the ridership of a rail line, why public transport should have differential services, why marketing and multimodal integration is crucial to the success of a PT system and why one nation one card is imperative for the paradigm change envisioned in our national urban transport policy.
Our hosts visited Professor Sanjay Gupta, Head of the Transport Planning Department, SPA Delhi, and in a candid interview, Prof. discussed the legacy of the Transport Planning Department, his own journey from being a student to the HOD in his Alma Mater and his teaching experiences at other universities such as Leeds UK, present student batches and the placement scenario at TPD, advice for new aspirants and what to expect once they become part of SPA. He also discussed his views on the capacity gaps in government institutions. Through TTP by VERCOS, Professor reached out to all the alumni of TPD to come forward and make the department stronger than ever at the upcoming Golden Jubilee Celebration in mid-2020.
Listen to our Podcast
