Making the largest megacities smart, green and efficient was the main goal pursued by the participants of the International Transport Summit held in Moscow. The guests of the forum were mayors, ministers, as well as heads of technology companies from Europe, South-East Asia, South and Central America, the Middle East, India and Africa.

“It’s great that transport specialists have gathered here. As the mayor of a city of millions, I am very interested in what we as a city government can do for our Raipur to improve the traffic situation,” said Aijaz Dhebar, Mayor of Raipur, India.

“Every day, Yangon’s transport carries about one million people. Our system needs to be updated, and here in Russia we have seen how well the railway transport is coping with this. We would like to have such high-speed trains and electric buses,” said Soe Thein, Minister of Transport of Yangon, Myanmar.

Representatives of India and Myanmar, as well as other participants of the summit, were primarily interested in the Russian experience in combating traffic jams and harmful emissions, as Moscow and St. Petersburg have made serious progress in this area in recent years.

“The integrated development of Moscow’s transport infrastructure has been recognised as the best in the world by the International Union of Public Transport. In the next few years we will not have a single metro car over five years old, and the public transport fleet will become the youngest in Europe and will be fully electric by 2030,” said Sergey Cheremin, Minister of the Moscow City Government, Head of the Department for External Economic and International Relations of Moscow.

One of the most successful Russian transport projects in recent years has been electric buses. Only on Moscow streets they are already more than a thousand, about 300 more cars, according to the Moscow government, are planned to be released on the routes in several dozen regions. China is not lagging behind in this respect either – the country is already preparing the world’s first unmanned electric bus for operation.

“The autonomous electric bus will be part of the MAAS integrated digital transport platform, which has been successfully operating in Beijing for more than four years. This project uses only electric buses and electric trains to reduce emissions. Today, about five million people use the system every day,” emphasised Feng Tao, director of policy research at the Beijing Municipal Commission (China).

While developing environmentally friendly transport, the Chinese authorities are also working on a system to encourage ordinary citizens to use it. For example, everyone who uses MAAS can save points, called carbon credits, in a special app, which can then be exchanged for rides. According to the Moscow Mayor’s Office, similar projects can work in Russia, and the programme of cooperation between the two countries in the field of transport called UrbanTransportData will help to adopt the experience. Sergey Cheremin and Feng Tao signed documents on participation in it at the summit.

After the official part, the forum guests went to see the most modern sections of the capital’s transport system. The exchange of ideas on how to make cities cleaner and more accessible took place within the framework of special round tables, as reported by TV BRICS.

Photo: TV BRICS