PANAJI
The Logistics Division under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has plans to upgrade the transport system of cities under the Freight-Smart Cities Initiative initially for 10 cities in the country and the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) is pushing for Panaji to be included in this list.
CCP Commissioner Agnelo Fernandes recently gave a presentation on work carried out on urban freight in Panaji at the National Level Consultative Meeting on Freight Smart Cities organised by the ministry, which was attended by nearly 300 participants from various local and state governments, organisations and experts in urban freight and sustainable development.
The logistics division of the ministry has come out with the initiative to help cities manage increasing pollution, traffic congestion and public health-related problems due to increasing commercial transport in urban areas.
The ministry has suggested that states form city-level logistic committees with all transport and logistics stakeholders (such as service providers and users) to finalise the ground-level plan of city logistics.
EFFORTS
The State government has already shown interest in developing Panaji as Smart City through a special purpose vehicle Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Limited (IPSCDL).
The CCP in collaboration with ICLEI South Asia under the German-funded project EcoLogistics already formed a multi-stakeholder logistics committee for the city last year. CCP believes that the inclusion of Panaji in the initial list of Freight-Smart Cities Initiative will help in the overall development of the city.
Since 2019, the CCP in collaboration with ICLEI South Asia has been working on the project “Ecologistics: Low carbon freight for sustainable cities” to build strategies and plans to develop and promote Low Carbon Urban Freight in Panaji.
The project has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety through their International Climate Initiative (IKI) for nine cities in three countries, Argentina, Colombia and India (Kochi, Shimla and Panaji).
FINDINGS
In its report on Panaji, the ICLEI South Asia has presented detailed figures about the present and projected traffic load in the capital city.
The total load of freight transported to and within Panaji city per day is estimated to be 2,038.85 tonnes. Of this, only 7 per cent or about 172.62 tonnes of delivery is to wholesalers/distributors/ centres in the city and comprises mainly trips from outside the city.
The report adds that 670.35 tonnes of freight is delivered every day to retailers/commercial establishments in the city.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Some of the recommendations include policy and technology intervention, such as electrification (along with non-motorisation) of freight trips in the city.
The infrastructure intervention includes freight parking and logistics infrastructure development inside and on the periphery of the city.
The electrification modes look at the mix of e-rickshaw and freight four-wheelers, allowing reduction of carbon footprint from the freight sector especially when combined with renewable energy-based charging infrastructure.
