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The Standing Committee report says that in view of the city’s experience, the Delhi government should “abandon the other five BRT corridors as approved earlier”. Instead, the government should strengthen the Delhi Metro rail service with a strong feeder bus network, covering all bus networks in the city, the expert panel suggests.
The Standing Committee report says, “If the mass transportation is improved integrating MRTS (Mass Rapid Transit System) and feeder bus service with high reliability, good frequency of service and easy accessibility, personalised vehicle users will no doubt switch over to public transport system.” Such a switchover among car-users, the report says, has been seen in New York, Toronto and London, “where the public transport system is very predominant”.
The Standing Committee observation came in the light of a report submitted by School of Planning and Architecture head Prof P K Sarkar, who has highlighted a number of “loopholes” in the Delhi model of BRT. In his observations, Prof Sarkar has pointed out that one of the major failures of this transport model in Delhi has been to take away seven metres of road width from the already inadequate right of way of the road.
According to the expert’s observations, even before the BRT system was implemented, the road, divided into six lanes, experienced very heavy traffic volume for most part of the day. The stretch needed to be widened to handle that traffic volume even before the BRT idea was implemented, the report says. But instead of adding width, two lanes were taken out of the corridor, the report points out.
According to the committee, the passenger carrying capacity of the BRT model in Bogota (Colombia) is higher due to more road space given to cars. But in Delhi, “even movement of pedestrian traffic across the BRT corridor is not well planned”. Result: pedestrians have to walk comparatively longer distances to cross the corridor, the report says.
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The panel is throwing out the baby with the bathwater with their decision to abandon the BRTS system altogether for Delhi. The failure of the first phase BRTS route is not because that there wasn't any capacity in the right-of-way, but that it did not connect anyone living on that corridor to anywhere the wanted to go. Planned BRTS stops are strategically placed at the center of high intensity land uses. The entire corridor in phase-I hardly has any high intensity employment of residential within 1/2 km of any of the stops. If the corridor was from Patparganj to Nehru Place,there would have been an immediate drop in vehicular traffic on ring road and Mathura Road, with several Maruti 800s and two wheelers left behind due to the headaches of traffic and parking. If the BRTS had been designed and planned like the Delhi metro, Delhi would have seen similar success and probably a third of the cost. Bottomline, Delhi govt should be blamed not the BRTS mode of transit.
Although I agree with the conclusion that the first phase of the BRT in Delhi was very poorly executed, from selection of the corridor, to the design and construction; but to say that Delhi scrap the idea all together will truly be unfortunate. The main failure of the Sheikh Sarai -Moolchand route was the lack of complementary land uses along that corridor. BRT works best when the stops are at the center high density residential and/or employment centers. The corridor has almost none of that. Ideally the route should have connected a mojor residential area (say patparganj) to an employment center (like Nehru Place). It would have taken so many maruti 800 and scooter drivers off the roads and on the bus. However, the Delhi government provided this to the residents of GK who don't really need it.
The very idea of having a BRT corridor in the middle of the alredy congested roads in Delhi was mindless. The unruly chaotic blue-line buses should be grounded as soon as possible.