Raphael Warjri

The city of Shillong received an award for “City with the Best Record of Public Involvement in its
Transport Planning” for the project “Shared Commuter Service in East Khasi Hills (Shillong), an initiative
implemented by the Sustainable Transport and Efficient Mobility Society (STEMS)”, on the occasion of the
16th Urban Mobility India Conference and Expo 2023, held from 27th to 29th October 2023 in New Delhi.
Shri Manoj Joshi, Secretary - Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India presented this
honour to STEMS on Sunday, October 29, 2023. Smt Isawanda Laloo, IAS, Secretary to the Govt of
Meghalaya and CEO of STEMS, along with the STEMS team members accepted the award. Other cities
which received awards under different categories in the event included Delhi, Lucknow, Srinagar,
Bhubaneswar, Kochi, and Jabalpur.
This is the first national recognition for STEMS, which was conceptualised in the year 2021 by the Planning
Department, Government of Meghalaya. STEMS's first initiative hit the ground in 2023 with the release of
30 school buses catering to various chokepoints of the city of Shillong. Equipped with CCTVs and utilising
GPS tracking enabling real-time updates to parents, each of the buses is staffed with trained caretakers and
routes were designed after multiple rounds of consultations with public and government stakeholders. The
implementing partners of STEMS include the Meghalaya Transport Corporation, NIC Meghalaya and NIC
Uttarakhand, with close assistance from Shillong Traffic Police and the Public Works Department (Roads).
It may be noted that the award was conferred to STEMS for its exemplary involvement of various
stakeholders, most notably, community members, school authorities and parents apart from exhaustive
consultations with government departments like the District Administration, East Khasi Hills, Shillong
Traffic Police, PWD, MTC, and others while planning and designing the intervention. In its pilot initiative
of introducing a shared bus commute system for 15 schools in Shillong City, the project has garnered
favourable responses and obtained positive feedback from parents and students. The project is aimed to
benefit the citizens of the city, who generally spend 70 minutes on average in traffic snarls daily. With the
increase in student registration, the introduction of multiple routes and increased awareness of the project, it
is expected that the rollout of the entire fleet will significantly reduce the congestion on the roads while also
ensuring a safe and comfortable commute for students.
The annual Urban Mobility India (UMI) Conference and Expo is a flagship event held under the aegis of the
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India. The event is inaugurated by the Hon’ble
Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs. The genesis of UMI is from the National Urban Transport
Policy of the Government of India, 2006 (NUTP), which lays a very strong emphasis on building
capabilities at the State and city level to address the problems associated with urban transport and undertake
the task of developing sustainable urban transport systems. The theme of the 16th Urban Mobility
Conference and Expo 2023 was Integrated and Resilient Urban Transport.