India's city officials are learning from a global network of transport experts. Photo by Anavrin Sankhe.

CST-India launched a peer learning program in July 2009 to allow city officials and local transport planners to exchange information, best practices and lessons learned about sustainable transportation initiatives. The program, largely funded by The World Bank, built the capacity of urban leaders through conferences, workshops on bus rapid transit, walking and biking, and international study tours, including one of Ahmedabad’s Janmarg BRT system.

In August 2009, CST-India also kick-started the "Low Carbon High Growth Transport Strategies for Indian Cities" program with support from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in India. As part of this project CST-India developed “Bus Karo: A Guidebook on Bus Planning and Operations” and hosted training workshops for more than 35 transport practitioners. Development of the guidebook coincides with the effort of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM), the Government of India’s city modernization plan, to become a source of financing for the procurement of new buses nationwide. Recently, 54 cities received government funding for 14,240 new buses.

CST-India staff also continued to build the capacity of the Ministry of Urban Development and other institutions. By hosting more than a dozen events, CST-India has reached more than 50 senior engineers, planners and bureaucrats from more than 20 cities in India.

"The study tour on the Janmarg system in Ahmedabad organized by CST-India was key to reinforcing critical concepts of planning and designing a BRT system. After seeing how Janmarg works and learning how it was developed, cities participating in the study tour are very interested in incorporating aspects pioneered by Janmarg in their BRT projects."
- Ke Fang, Senior Urban Transport Specialist, The World Bank

Photo by Dario Hidalgo.