Proficient and reliable Transportation plays a pivotal role in sustaining and promoting the economy. Disasters such as Covid 19 pandemic has altered and disrupted not only millions of lives, but also has triggered unimaginable monetary damage.
Major City of Transport in India
Delhi
Mumbai
Bangalore
This pandemic could pose huge, irreversible and expensive threats to the future of the transportation industry. The turbulent economy triggered by slowdown has lately made it difficult for logistic and transportation business to thrive. This lockdown has brought transportation of goods to a significant halt, even though the government has reduced restrictions to maintain supply chain. According to study conducted by All India Motor Transport Congress, the Daily movement of trucks has collapsed to less than 10% of normal levels thus disrupting the supply chain of essential goods.
Importance of transportation of goods in critical times
Efficient Transportation services are crucial for modern day economies to thrive and maintain people’s lifestyles. You cannot undermine the importance of Trucking in supply chains for everything ranging from food to medical supplies as state and central governments take stringent measures to contain the pandemic and are curbing the movement of vehicles. There is a growing demand for truck transportation in 2020 to meet the demands of the people for essential commodities, food, groceries, medical supplies and other products.
Transportation industry faces grave concerns
A series of challenging issues have sprung in these turbulent times when restrictions have been imposed due to lockdown resulting in ‘piecemeal opening of supply chain’. The future of transportation industry is affected at the moment with the effects of prolonged quarantine because of COVID-19 pandemic. Critical issues concerning transportation need to be addressed promptly so that slowing of the movement of goods and people can be avoided. The spread of the corona virus outbreak has highlighted the importance of efficient transportation to maintain seamless movement of goods and services. The need of the hour is to address concerns to make transportation more resilient, efficient, safe, and equitable so, that the supply chain can fully be restored to normalcy
Few critical issues include;
- Infrastructure maintenance costs are very high
- Environmental issues such as corona virus impacts transportation
- Driver shortage and retention of skilled drivers is a major issue which has surfaced in 2020.
- New technology strategies have to be adopted and implemented to improve efficiency
- Decline in the quality of offered services on the roads in the country due to lockdown during Corona pandemic
- Poor institutional arrangement and lack of coordination in the road transport
- Issues regarding secure and safe driving
- The lockdown has closed highway food establishments and workshops, thus basic services cannot be provided to the drivers as they are on the road
- Recruiting and retaining qualified and well-trained truck driver workforce
- One of the major issues facing transporters is loading and unloading because of a shortage of labor,
- Constantly rising freight rates
Integrating Innovative Technology helps to transform transportation systems making it secure and more efficient in all ways. Transportation Infrastructure has thus to be restructured using modern technology so that it can become more resilient and flexible to current changes and meet the staggering costs of operations .
