Odisha capital Bhubaneswar has been awarded the ‘City with the Best Public Transport System’ at the 17th Urban Mobility India (UMI) Conference & Exhibition 2024 held in Gandhinagar, Gujarat over the weekend.
While Srinagar was selected as the ‘City with the Best Non-Motorized Transport System’, Kochi won the award for “City with the Most Sustainable Transport System”.
The UMI has different categories of award in the field of Transport Sector especially in the Urban Transport and the awards are given to the state / city authorities for “Excellence/ best practice projects in Urban Transport”. At least 12 categories of awards are given to the winners who have been recommended by the Awards Selection Committee headed by the high-level officers of the Government and experts of the field.
They include “City with the Most Sustainable Transport System”, “City with the Best Public Transport System”, “City with the Best Non-Motorised Transport System”, “City with Best Safety and Security System & Record” etc. The full list of awardees for this year are attached below.
Union Minister Manohar Lal, who addressed the valedictory function of the event, announced Gurugram, Haryana as the venue of 18th Urban Mobility India (UMI) Conference & Exhibition 2025. Addressing the valedictory Session, Manohar Lal stated that India has now come to the third position in the world in terms of operational rail network. “Very soon Indian Metro network shall become second largest. Hon’ble Prime Minister’s vision of One Nation One Card which is called National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) is now becoming reality and most of the Metros in India have adopted NCMC and this is going to be a game changer in Urban Mobility sector,” he said.
Tokhan Sahu, MoS, Housing and Urban Affairs applauded the Urban Mobility India (UMI) yearly conference initiative since 2008 in addressing the issues of Urban Mobility in India. He is also delighted to share surpassing of more than 1 crore daily ridership of Metro trains in the country. He has also highlighted that vision and commitment of Hon’ble Prime Minister of India towards “Viksit Bharat 2047”.
| Sl. No. | Award Category | Winner | ||
| City | Organisation | |||
| 1 | City with the Most Sustainable Transport System | Kochi | Kochi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. | |
| 2 | City with the Best Public Transport System | Bhubaneswar | Capital Region Urban Transport (CRUT) | |
| 3 | City with the Best Non-Motorized Transport System | Srinagar | Srinagar Smart City Ltd. | |
| 4 | City with the Best Safety and Security System & Record | Gandhinagar | Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation | |
| 5 | City with the Best Intelligent Transport System (ITS) | Surat | Surat Municipal Corporation | |
| 6 | City with the Most Innovative Financing Mechanism | Jammu | Jammu Smart City Ltd. | |
| 7 | City with Best Record of Public Involvement in Transport | Bengaluru | Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation | |
| 8 | Metro Rail with the Best Multimodal Integration | Bengaluru | Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. | |
| 9 | Metro Rail with the Best Passenger Services and Satisfaction | Mumbai | Mumbai Metro One Pvt. Ltd. | |
The 17th UMI Conference & Exhibition 2024 has been organized by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs through the Institute of Urban Transport (India) and with the support of Government of Gujarat and Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. The exhibition comprising display of best practices in urban transport in India and aboard, latest urban transport technologies, attracted more than 2200 delegates including more than 50 participants from abroad.
The exhibition is an important part of the UMI Conference organized every year. Around 76 exhibitors from Metro Rail Companies, public and private sectors participated in the event. It has great value and provides big platform for not only Indian Manufacturers but also foreign manufacturing companies. The companies based in Germany, France, Spain, etc. have also participated in this exhibition. As many as 67 Indian exhibitors and 17 foreign exhibitors have participated in the event.
This year, the Conference was focussed on the theme “Standardisation and Optimisation of Urban Transport Solutions”. It has emphasized on harmonising standards for Optimising urban mobility particularly in the Indian context. Further, It has deliberated upon the framework for integration of various modes in urban mobility, multilateral and bilateral funding in view of the Make in India policy, importance of big data for transport planning, E-Bus Eco-system in India, benchmarking of cost in Metro system, digital public infrastructure principles in relation to E-Bus transition, innovative financing and other issues and challenges in Urban transport.
The conference has also dwelled upon vision for clean air cities, urban freight, urban transport solutions for small and middle towns in India, the need of the hour is to optimise and standardise the urban transport solutions to have efficient and effective system.