Data-driven insights on urban mobility, smart city technology, and how software is reshaping traffic management.
The Smart Cities Mission put sensors and cameras on more Indian junctions than anything before it, and traffic still got worse. Here's what I think actually went wrong, and why most of that data turned out to be nearly unusable.
Notes from onboarding a city with no traffic lights. I went in assuming Shillong barely had a traffic problem, and came back convinced this product might matter more to small, growing cities than to the big, broken ones we usually build for.
Most congested roads aren't the problem; they're backed up behind one. How software separates traffic causes from symptoms, on every road, no cameras.
Google RMI is the first genuine successor to the 1954 Detroit origin-destination survey. Every measurement tool in between was a workaround for the same missing data.
Five questions every Indian city should answer before approving the next ITMS camera tender. A data-driven diagnostic for planners.
Camera-based systems cover junctions. Sensor loops cover highways. But what about the arterial roads, residential streets, and service lanes where most congestion actually builds?