Very soon highway commuters between Delhi and Jaipur would be able to tune in to live updates on traffic, route and the weather, courtesy a pilot project to be launched by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH).

These much-needed highway advisory services would be launched on the stretch of NH8 between Delhi to Jaipur in three phases. In the first phase, existing All India Radio (AIR) stations located at Delhi, Alwar and Jaipur are to broadcast live traffic updates to commuters.

For this a contract has been signed with AIR to buy air-time for first phase of the pilot project in which 22 bulletins will be issued every day for three months. The bulletins are to include safety awareness content along with live traffic updates on NH8, the minister of state for Road Transport & Highways, P Radhakrishnan informed the Lok Sabha today.

Adding that the possibility of a single frequency for whole country is being examined, the minister said that the pilot project will be launched very soon.

The initiative is part of the government's plan to build an intelligent transport system that addresses concerns regarding road safety through enhanced data collection. Highway radio advisories, common in developed nations, often play a critical role in road safety and given the state of Indian roads and the alarming rise in traffic accident-related deaths, a service like this could prove to be very useful.

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