File photo of autorickshaws in Delhi

NEW DELHI: Travelling by an autorickshaw in the capital is likely to become safer, particularly for women, with Delhi government embarking on an initiative to ensure all autos, along with other public transit vehicles have functional GPS devices that can be tracked from a control centre.

An official of the transport department said that autorickshaws and other para-transit vehicles will have to install panic buttons along with GPS devices.

A decade ago, Delhi government had made it mandatory for all autorickshaws and taxis in the city to have functional GPS devices. All public service vehicles including autos, taxis, buses, gramin sewa vehicles etc. plying in the city with permits from the transport department are mandated to have GPS devices. In reality, however, not many of these vehicles have functional GPS devices, making them untraceable from the Operations Control Centre of the department’s headquarters in north Delhi.

This is all set to change. Delhi government is planning to rope in a private concessionaire that will set up a common control centre for Automatic Vehicle Location System for para-transit vehicles. “The centre will come up at Kashmere Gate and all data received from vehicles, including SOS signals from panic buttons, will be shared with the Delhi Police. The concessionaire will supply, install, commission, operate and maintain the GPS-based vehicle tracking system for public service vehicles,” a Delhi government official said.

Cabs operating with app-based aggregators, however, are not planned to be tracked from the control centre as a separate policy for such cabs has been prepared.

“We need to track more than two lakh public service vehicles in Delhi but at present most don’t have functional GPS devices. The concessionaire will also have to revalidate and install SIM cards in these vehicles for functioning of GPS/GPRS devices,” he said.

As part of the permit conditions, owners of these public service vehicles are not only required to fit GPS devices in the vehicles but also maintain them in working condition. Even if a vehicle is parked and there is no signal from the vehicle’s GPS device , it is considered non-activation of GPS.

