Workshop participants in Goa, India. Photo by CST-India.

Senior Transport Specialist Amit Bhatt joined other Indian city officials and transport experts during a two-day workshop in Goa, India to assess gaps in capacity-building to make urban transport projects more successful.

"Past experiences from the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) [a city modernization plan] suggest that there is a complete mismatch between policy and implementation in the case of urban transportation projects," Bhatt said.

EMBARQ's Center for Sustainable Transport in India has already been providing technical expertise to cities to help address this gap. Capacity-building activities have included conferences, workshops on bus rapid transit, walking and biking, and international study tours.

The Goa workshop, held August 29-31, was part of the Sustainable Urban Transport Project (SUTP), a new initiative led by India's Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and other partners, including the Global Environment Facility, The World Bank, United Nations Development Programme, and the the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

Other featured guests out of the 34 workshop participants included O.P. Agarwal, urban transport adviser from The World Bank, and SN Srinivas, a UNDP programe officer.