A Public Interest Litigation has been filed by an NGO representing interests of para-public transport of autorickshaws. It claims that being a para-public transport, autorickshaws must be allowed to use the ‘underutilized’ BRT lanes. In this two-part article, the saga of the Delhi BRT will be unfolded

If you take a car lane, you will not be able to carry more than 1,250 cars per hour safely. Given the fact that on an average it carries less than two persons, the number of people a car lane carries does not exceed 2,500 persons per hour.

A bus on the other hand, with a 50 seats, peak time load of say 70 persons, plying every minute, carries 70 x 60 = 4,200 persons. If the frequency is increased to 30 seconds, it will carry 8,400 persons per hour. If the bus to be used is an articulated one with capacity of 1,75 passengers, the bus lane will carry 120 x 175 = 21,000 pph.

If there are three lanes on a road and there is mixed traffic on it, we know from experience that number of persons the three-lane road carries, with stoppages at signals, etc, come to about 3,000 plus about 1,500 from 20 buses that may pass in an hour. Thus it is reasonable to say that 5,000 persons are carried by a three-lane road with mixed traffic.

Let us reallocate the lane spaces such that one lane is provided to buses and two for cars and the rest. The throughput in the two lanes for mixed traffic can come down to 3,500 and the bus lane will then carry 1,500 if only 20 buses pass. This means the headway between buses will be three minutes.

With a dedicated bus lane, we can ply a bus every 30 seconds also and it can then carry 60x60/30 x 70 = 8,400 people per hour. At cruising speed of 30 km/h and a small headway of 30 seconds, the distance between two consecutive buses would be as much as 250 m which would make other road users wanting to use the space.
With the dedicated bus lane or the BRT lane, the throughput of the three lane road would be as high as 3500 + 8400 = 11,900 persons per hour. If articulated buses with capacity of 175 or bi-articulated buses with capacity of 250 per bus are deployed at 30 seconds headway, the throughput would be 120 x 175 = 21,000 and 120 x 250 = 30,000. Thus, using BRTS (bus rapid transport system), overall mobility on the road is increased more than two-fold, five-fold and seven-fold of mixed traffic for normal, articulated and bi-articulated buses respectively. As stated earlier, at 30 km/h speed and 30 seconds headway, the gap between two buses would be 250 m and at 20 km/h speed it will be 166 m. It is sufficient for the users of non-BRT lanes to feel that the space is being denied to them and their mobility is being hampered.

Let us look at Bogota where the locally elected body through the then visionary mayor Enrique Penalosa opted for BRTS, a model that has been in successful operation in Curituba since the 1970s. Bogota, a city with too many motorized personal cars causing traffic woes and air and noise pollution, did not opt for Metrorail although its per capita income was far more than any of Indian cities. They opted for BRTS because it was affordable and quickly implementable. Not that Penalosa did not face opposition but he had people’s mandate and the will to implement policies which were people friendly. In Bogota, the main BRT corridor runs articulated buses sometimes on dual lanes and most times on single lanes with overtaking lanes at certain locations. The headway is as little as 12 seconds and speeds are touching 40 km/hr.

Having said these things, let us look at what difficulties BRT in Delhi is facing.

Going back to 2008 when the BRT corridor was under implementation. Barring a few, media in general and the Times of India in particular was carrying out a vicious campaign against the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Corridor in Delhi, prior to and in the initial stages of implementation, giving a one-sided view. Independent studies were carried out at such media attack; one of them was by NDTV too. It came about that the about 5.6 km partial implementation of BRT of planned 19 5 km was being welcomed by public transport users while motorists were naturally adversely affected and their criticism was as expected. BRTS, as has been explained earlier, is to improve overall mobility of people and not of users of personal motorized transport. When a group of individuals and NGOs collectively wrote a letter to the editor of ToI, Delhi and others protesting against such irrational and false criticism and reporting, and NDTV telecasting its findings, the campaign died down. The government of Delhi decided to play cool and did not pursue with completing the full corridor to avoid wrath of the motorcar lobby, which surely cannot be only the car users. The economic stakes of the manufacturers are high and so is their advertisement budget on which media flourishes. To them, what is good for the masses is of no consequence.

In the light of the Commonwealth Games 2011, lanes were reserved for Games movements and very heavy penalty imposed for violators. Since criticism of this effort would be considered as anti-patriotic, the media and the car lobby kept quiet, knowing very well that this will not be allowed to become permanent.

However, the Delhi government has a clear vision. The Metro Rail, though being used by many, does not address commuting problems of the common man in Delhi and have realized that short of providing BRTS network, it has no financial wherewithal to provide a larger metro rail network. The Delhi government has now decided to plan and implement 14 BRT corridors.

If the BRT network comes into effect, the stakeholders are not only the car lobby itself but the Metro Rail itself. Metro rail is barely able to get enough revenue for its operations. It is looking for revenue from monetization of land use. Both these will get adversely affected by successful implementation of BRTS. The Delhi government has a stake in Metro Rail and it is a partner in ministry of urban development’s Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).

However, as an elected body it cannot bypass large electorate’s urgent needs and therefore the 14 BRT corridors are going to be implemented sooner or later. In fact the third term of Sheila Dixit as CM of Delhi was won by projecting BRT success.
With this as an introduction, the second part of the politics of the BRTS saga will be unfolded next week.

(Sudhir Badami is a civil engineer and transportation analyst. He is on Government of Maharashtra’s Steering Committee on BRTS for Mumbai and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority’s Technical Advisory Committee on BRTS for Mumbai. He is also member of Research & MIS Committee of Unified Mumbai Metropolitan Transport Authority. He is member of the Committee Constituted by the Bombay High Court for making the Railways, especially the Suburban Railways System Friendly towards Persons with Disability (2011- ). He can be contacted at [email protected])