Overview & Objectives

The Institute of Urban Transport India (IUT) was established in May, 1997 as a professional body under the purview of the Ministry of Urban Development Government of India (MOUD) as a premier professional non-profit making organization and registered under the Societies Registration Act. The objective of the Institute is to promote, encourage and coordinate the state of the art of urban transport including planning, development, operation, education, research and management.

The membership of the Institute comprises Academicians, Architects, Economists, Engineers, Transport Planners, Town Planners and professionals from various disciplines The Institute has more than 65 institutional members, 1400 individual members and 70 Associate Members. It has association with foreign organizations such LTA Singapore, GIZ, UITP etc.

The Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, is the ex-officio President of the Institute. Its Governing Council has members from various premier organizations connected with Urban Transport and State Governments.

National role for IUT

Apart from the professional activities of the Institute i.e. lecture meetings, seminars, workshops, information dissemination and training programmes, the Institute has been providing technical support to the MOUD which is the nodal Ministry for urban transport.

The Institute has been providing support to the Ministry in the preparation of National Urban Transport Policy under the guidance of OSD UT. This policy also provided that IUT should be suitably strengthened to serve as National level Institute for continuous advice and guidance on the principles of sustainable urban transport. Relevant paragraphs 41 and 42 from the NUTP 2006 are reproduced below;

• 41. Capacity building will have to be addressed at two levels – institutional and individual. Institutional capacity would primarily involve creating a pool of knowledge and a knowledge management center that would sustain and enhance expertise as well as facilitate more informed planning. It would also sponsor regular research to help formulate the right mitigation strategies, without merely adopting what other countries have tried. The Institute of Urban Transport (India), an existing institute under the purview of the Ministry of Urban Development would be suitably strengthened to discharge this responsibility. It would be built up to serve as a national level facility to provide continuous advice and guidance on the principles of good urban transport planning as emerges from its research. Advice on new technologies would also be regularly available to implementing agencies from this institute. For this purpose, the institute would become a store house of information on the various public transport technologies being used in different parts of the world and would maintain the latest information and literature on the experience with such technologies. It would, in fact be a comprehensive repository of the best practices in the field.
• 42. The virtual lack of a database on urban transport statistics has severely constrained the ability to formulate sound urban transport plans and reliably assess the impact of the different initiatives that have been taken. The national level institute would build up a database for use in planning, research, training, etc in the field of urban transport.”

Accordingly the Ministry has taken steps to strengthen the IUT. Five new wings have been set up in IUT; one each for research, publications, information and library, training and a ‘knowledge management cum database center’ with appropriate staffing.

IUT is now housed in spacious premises (1300 sq.ms.) at the 1st floor of AnandVihar Metro station.