Bhubaneswar, April 19: After Singapore and the Netherlands, it is the turn of Germany to pledge help for development of urban transport system under smart city project.

This was officially confirmed here today during the visit of a six-member team, comprising members of the central government and officials of the ministry of environment, Germany.

Two officials of the Union ministry of urban development and one from the Union ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation represented the Centre and the three-member German team was led by Frank Samuel, director of Indo-German Environment Partnership Programme. They met Bhubaneswar mayor Ananta Narayan Jena and spoke about the project in detail. Jena told the delegation that under the smart mobility plan, the city would increase the bus fleet from 165 to 600.

The delegation also visited across the city to take stock of the road conditions and traffic signalling system in the state capital.

Sources said that the German ministry of environment was willing to help the city in developing a state-of-the-art urban transport system.

"The team is interested in developing the urban mobility system in the city. An agreement to this effect will be formalised shortly," an official of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation said.

Earlier in March, Germany had communicated with the Union ministry of urban development and showed interest in contributing to India's smart city programme. Apart from Bhubaneswar, Germany will also help Kochi and Coimbatore in a similar project.

"We had a technical discussion with the team and will work on the modalities to improve the transport facility in the city. Another round of meetings will be held to finalise everything. We aim to develop the urban transport system for the citizens," said municipal commissioner Krishan Kumar.

In its proposal for improving urban mobility in the smart city, Bhubaneswar had proposed to have smart traffic management system such as traffic signalling, video surveillance and e-challan. It has also proposed to have electronic parking systems with parking mobile application.

According to the proposal, the city would also introduce integrated fare card for common payment facility. It will also have emergency response and city incident management system. The administration is planning to spend Rs 31,100 crore to improve the transportation service here.

The city administration last month had inked a pact with Netherlands-based Bernard van Leer Foundation to set up a child and family friendly smart city centre. Last month, the city administration had also planned to ink pacts with Singapore-based Urban Redevelopment Authority and Centre for Liveable Cities to build develop Bhubaneswar into a smart city.