Time for metro transport authority to check traffic blues?

Ahmedabad: If you are stuck in a traffic jam on SG Road and are putting the blame solely on traffic police, your criticism could be misplaced.
There are at least 15 agencies of Central and state government taking decisions on their own at various levels of policy making, planning, regulation and implementation before traffic police gets into the act.
With phenomenal growth of the city, Nano in the backyard and stupendous business boom as all the SEZs are being planned in sync with operationalisation of DMIC, is it time to have a Ahmedabad Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (AUMTA)?
At the recently held round-table by TOI at Ahmedabad Management Association, the unanimous opinion was that city's transport problems were due to lack of co-ordination between the agencies involved in looking after urban traffic.
According to planning experts, currently Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation is managing all civic affairs quite well. But as city's size gets bigger, problems too would augment and then things could simply go out of hand unless there is a multi-nodal arrangement which is integrated.
National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP) recommends setting up of Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) in all cities which have a million plus population. But such an authority would require a statutory backing giving it an overall control of the policy making, planning, regulating and operating of transport to meet the city's requirements.
A study conducted by CEPT University titled Institutional framework in delivery of urban transport' explores many possibilities after studying the transport models in cities abroad like London, Singapore and Indian cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad.
AUMTA would be a nodal body with all the other agencies as members so that macro as well as micro level issues are factored in the development of the metropolitan region. This would ensure that land use planning, transportation requirements and the infrastructure required for it is seamlessly planned and executed.
According to Rushabh Pandey of CEPT, the development plan that Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) is drawing up for the Ahmedabad metropolitan region covers 7,000 km. But it was felt that for better advance land use planning and chalking out a transportation system to meet the requirements, a larger area was covered by them.
This is more on the lines of the development model being adopted by Singapore where land use is identified in advance, transport systems are put in place before development activity is allowed to begin. This ensures that there is integrated land use and capacities are built in advance.