New Dart system to help drivers evade congestion

Dar es Salaam. Preparations for the introduction of an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) that could completely change the way people commute in Dar es Salaam’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) are in full gear.

The ITS, is an application that senses, analyses, controls and communicates technologies to ground transportation in order to improve safety, mobility and efficiency.

In a city prone to notorious traffic jams, the introduction of the ITS is expected to play a vital role in informing a driver on areas that he should avoid and those that he should use at any given time.

Yesterday, the Dar es Salaam Rapid Transit Agency (Dart) executive director, Dr Edwin Mhede announced the agency  was engaging a Spanish consultant to design, conduct a feasibility and plan where the control centres will be located and how fare will be collected.

“Today, is a kick off meeting to discuss and prepare the roadmap on how to implement the ITS that will be integrated with Automated Fare Collection of Dart,” he said.

Dr Mhede stressed that the agency has engaged (IDMO) company for 14 months.

He said five months will focus on conducting a feasibility study and plan while the remaining nine months will involve the procurement and installation of machines.

“Once the ITS is introduced, the passengers for BRT phase one will increase to 400,000 from the current 200,000 per day, next year around this time,” he said.

Dr Mhede explained that the ITS was necessary not only for scheduling but ensuring safety because they will be able to see and understand what was happening at every point during the operations.

He noted that the increased number of passengers will not be the only criteria of the ITS , but it would go hand in hand with the increased number of buses.

He said: “Now with safety and proper scheduling, we expect to improve the quality of services as anticipated in the agency’s Act of 1997, which provides that the agency is established to serve the public by improving  the quality of services.”

According to him, the system would enable Dart to schedule their buses efficiently and charge reasonable fare
IDOM and the ITS project manager Mr Miguuel Rodriguez said: “As consultants we are happy to be engaged in phase one of the BRT corridors for designing, procurement and supervision of installation of all ITS in the respective corridor.

“We already have a free collection system, which has been purchased by Dart. It will be integrated in all the ITS platforms which are going to be built for management of the corridors, security and planning purposes. So, it is going to be a compound of many different systems which will work together in an integrated way,” he said.

Mr Rodriguez said they have undertaken installation of the ITS in several African countries such as Nigeria, Ethiopia and other developed countries. “It is good thing  that Tanzania has engaged IDOM,” he said.