The Ahmedabad Janmarg BRTS has been nominated for the 2010 Sustainable Transport Award to be conferred on January 12 in Washington DC.

Ahmedabad will compete with BRTS systems in Cali city of Columbia, Curitiba city of Brazil, Guadalajara city in Mexico and Johannesburg in South Africa.

The BRTS systems were chosen by a select group of independent institutions like ITDP, EMBARQ, GTZ, ICLEI, UITP and UNDP.

“This is a proud moment for the city as Ahmedabad Janmarg Limited (AJL) had not applied for the award. Key independent institutions who were part of the award committee were in the city to study our BRTS earlier in the year and made their observations and judged us on certain scientific parameters,” said municipal commissioner IP Gautam.

About the award

Last year, New York City became the first U.S. city to win the 2009 Sustainable Transport Award. The city was recognized for its significant transport reforms, as a continuation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030, a long-term vision to improve the city’s land use, air and water quality, energy infrastructure and transportation systems. The city received accolades for transforming 49 acres of road space, traffic lanes and parking spaces into 255 kilometers of protected on-street bike lanes, as well as pedestrian areas and public plazas. Other notable accomplishments included planting 98,000 trees, implementing a select bus service and introducing car-free Sundays, similar to what can be seen in cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Bogota.

This year for the first time in the six-year history of the award, all of the finalists are cities in developing countries, as officially announced last week by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.

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