ISLAMABAD: Prof Mohammad Zaman, head of the Zaman Research Centre (ZRC) at Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU), has said his team has come up with solutions to ensure road safety and offers city managers solutions to traffic problems.

He was speaking at a function held to evaluate the performance of his team, dedicated to HEC’s Grand Challenge Fund (GCF) project titled ‘Optimal Use of Available Resources: A Prototype Model of Road Safety in Islamabad’.

Mr Zaman said road safety should not be confused with traffic management.

“Road safety is a concept that includes countering pollution, saving lives and offering solutions. Islamabad needs 300 buses to overcome its mass transit needs. We have developed apps after thorough research that can tell commuters which bus to take and how long they have to wait for it.

We have monitored the movement of people digitally on different routes and roads,” he said.

“On the basis of our work, we are able to offer the city managers solutions to traffic problems. We can tell them which new routes are to open. Our apps are working, and QAU students are benefiting from them,” he said.

He said that his team has developed smart parking mechanisms for Islamabad. He said there was a need to pool buses in the federal capital so that available resources could be used optimally. “If we make a pool of buses, we will cut down the number of vehicles on our roads in a big way. It will lead to saving resources that are needed to operate these buses. It will also cut down on pollution levels,” he said.

“However, the existing lot of bureaucrats is alien to the concept of pooling, and red tape has been hampering these solutions from being presented to the masses for whom they are meant for. Out-of-the-box thinking is the need of the hour, as we have resources enough to solve our problems but we lack strategy,” he said.

Researchers from QAU, International Islamic University Islamabad, National University of Sciences and Technology, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Ibadat University, and others attended the event and presented their work.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2024