Lucknow, April 7 The Uttar Pradesh Police launched an AI-based pilot project – the "City-Reducing Traffic Congestion (C-RTC)" scheme – across 20 districts on Tuesday to ease traffic congestion and reduce travel time on key urban routes.
The scheme, introduced under the directives of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, aims to ensure smooth, uninterrupted, and time-bound movement of traffic in urban areas, which have been witnessing rapid population and vehicular growth, according to an official statement.
The statement said that traffic congestion has emerged as a major challenge in cities, leading to higher fuel consumption, increased air pollution, and delays in emergency services such as ambulances and fire tenders.
Under the first phase, the scheme will be implemented in all seven police commissionerates and 13 other districts, covering a total of 20 units. As many as 172 congestion-prone routes have been identified across districts, including Lucknow, Kanpur, Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Agra, Meerut, and Gorakhpur, it said.
The core objective of the initiative is to reduce travel time between the starting and end points of identified routes, especially during peak hours, by ensuring smooth traffic flow and removing bottlenecks, the statement added.
To achieve this, a "one route, one marshal" system has been introduced.
Each identified route will be assigned a Route Marshal, selected from among the most efficient traffic inspectors or sub-inspectors, who will be responsible for implementing the plan on the ground. The marshals will work in coordination with the local police station in-charges, according to the police.
Senior gazetted officers in traffic wings will act as nodal officers in each district to oversee the execution of the scheme, they said.
The plan focuses on five key areas – education and awareness, enforcement, engineering and technological intervention, encroachment removal, and regulation of e-rickshaw operations – to ensure effective traffic management.
An AI-based technology platform has been deployed to monitor traffic conditions in real time. The system will provide graphical and tabular analysis of minimum, maximum, and average travel times on identified routes, and instantly map congestion points, according to the statement.
The statement said that nodal officers can access the system through smartphones and track both real-time and historical traffic data, including trends over weeks and months.
In the initial phase, the authorities have set a target of reducing maximum travel time on identified routes by 20 per cent during peak hours.
The performance of each route will be monitored by the Traffic Directorate and periodically evaluated. A comprehensive review of the scheme will be conducted after one month, it added.