CUMTA Plans Consolidation of Chennai Transport Data

The platform will consolidate maps, road details, water and power line locations and public transport routes from more than 30 government departments, including the traffic police, Metro Rail, the bus corporation, Metro Water and Tangedco. It will include a coordination tool to allow departments to plan and track infrastructure projects jointly rather than independently. Six components will work as a shared data layer that connects departmental systems rather than generating new data.

Before drafting the plan, the consultant held discussions with 31 departments to assess the data each holds and their readiness to share it, and CUMTA officials visited Singapore to study a comparable system. The report found agencies such as CUMTA, Metro Rail and the Greater Chennai Corporation are well prepared to integrate with the new system, while local traffic police units and some smaller municipal bodies require more preparatory work. The system is designed to connect with existing departmental databases and to flag conflicts and route approvals through a common workflow.

The report benchmarked the proposal against road digging management systems used in Delhi, Bengaluru and Kerala and concluded that no other Indian city combines all the proposed features. Officials indicated that the platform would not duplicate departmental records but would enable automatic flagging of conflicts between agencies and streamline approval routing for traffic police. A review committee is scheduled to discuss the final draft next week before submission to the government.