Delhi’s Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) has come under fire.
Mitali points out a problem
But the real beauty of the provider-consumer relationship lies in the Bus Rapid Transit system. Here, bus stops placed in the middle lanes of the road allow people to alight and have to cross other traffic to get to the sides of the road. To avoid an unseemly death-march through traffic, they will be let off at bus stops placed at traffic lights. This will cause traffic to have to get through masses of red lights on the BRT stretch, slowing it to a blood-curdling crawl, which neatly solves the problem of how to get it moving as fast as possible.
In an older post, Kreeti believes car and two-wheeler owners have been short-changed
The entire road stretch, where the project is being implemented in South Delhi, has only four lanes (two on both sides), one lane on both sides is fully being dedicated to the HCBS while the lakhs of motorists and two wheeler users commuting daily on this stretch have been given a raw deal as only one lane on both sides is dedicated to them, which I agree is a bottleneck for the thousands of commuters who stay in that area.
Those interested in the issue can also check out Paul Barter’s Blog on this issue as well as other links.
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Mitali and Kreeti have echoed the sentiments of the silent majority who can see without any doubt that the BRTS is nothing but a disaster which will not only slow down the traffic but may lead to rise in the number of accidents as both the bus drivers, known for their utter disregard for traffic rules, and others too, will jump lanes as the space available after segregation of the dedicated bus lanes is going to reduce while the number of cars is going to sharply increase.
There seems to be a major scam here as this plan is bound to fail and will have to be discarded sooner rather than later. Reverting affected roads to the original pattern will open up another income stream! That looks to be the forethought behind starting this disaster in the first place!
Vinod - thanks for the comment. It’s worth investigating the hows and whys of this issue.
The traffic jams in March are nothing compared to the hell commuters are facing on the BRT Corridor now. There is no solution to the problem and the situation is going to get worse once a million Nanos hit Delhi’s streets.
Thanks to all for visiting the post. I wanted to reiterate the point to revisit BRT planning system through this and I am glad that I can finally see things moving in that direction. I agree completely that initiatives like this always harbours good results and thats why I mentioned that it may be a pain today but probably it will be point of ease tomorrow, we need to see the bigger picture and stop bickering like immature kids. Not blaming the system but yes questioning it and questioning our patience…
Hi,
Do you know all what BRT is? Most of the Metro cities like Delhi, Bangalore are all suffering from traffic woes and chaos. Metro Systems is one answer, but, it is very long to build and very huge capital investment. Easiest and quickest answer is the BRTS.
People should stop thinking the ‘CAR’ way. With the increased income of people and more and more cars proliferating to Indian market, if the car growth increases the way it is happening now, it may take 1 hour to travel 1 km. BRT eases these kind of issues. After all BRT has taken 2 lanes out of 6 lanes. Buses are moving so comfortably now which most of the people who cannot afford cars / 2 wheelers can move comfortably. Introduction of A/C buses will make travel better than cars. You don’t have to pay hefty insurance, nor bear hefty fuel bills and worry about the dents and roadfights that usually happens for car accidents.
Accidents are mainly due to mistake of the people and not the brt. On a BRT corridor, people are not supposed to walk or cross. Ideally there should be subways or skywalks. Here people should cross the roads in zebra crossings.
An ideal city is the one where people use more public transport. There won’t be chaos and pollution.
Don’t try to ease the traffic, get away from it using BRT buses. You can see your bus passing comfortably when the luxurious cars are struck in the traffic.