Beginning from Shreyas overbridge to Naranpura AEC junction, the travel on the route is a nightmare and Gautam admitted that as many as 500 representations had been received at the AMC from traders community about substantial losses they are suffering due to their becoming inaccessible by customers. “We are alive to their problem and in the interest of public, we are trying our best to complete the work as early as it can be,” he said.

The AMC, he said, is constantly reviewing the situation but the process has to take its own time in the natural course. He said that by around June, BRTS civil work on the Nehrunagar-Shivranjani junction would be completed and the entire phase one of 12 km stretch from Pirana to RTO would be over in the stipulated period of 18 months.

However, he would not specify any time-frame for this.

The project, it looks, will be delayed because the AMC is simultaneously laying storm water drainage line and replacing the old lines and at the same time care is being taken that the underground cable networks are not damaged. “At places we have to dig deeper than planned just to save BSNL and other networks, which cannot be shifted, and prevent major inconvenience to around one lakh phone subscribers,” he said.

Meanwhile, according to surveys got conducted in the recent past by the AMC, originally none of the 12 junctions on the BRTS route have crossed peak traffic of 10,000 vehicles per hour. Once BRTS is in place, there would be no need to widen roads or building new flyovers because, it is expected, a large number of commuters will shift from personal vehicles to BRTS bus.

This should also cause substantial fall in peak hour traffic, it is hoped. The expected shift from private vehicles to BRTS would also reduce number of vehicles on this route from 5,500 an hour to less than 4,000, it is expected.