By IANS,
New Delhi : The Delhi High Court Monday said that the bus rapid transit (BRT) corridor concept and design is not bad.
A division bench of Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Manmohan Singh said that the concept of BRT was not bad and asked the Delhi government to respond till Tuesday on the efforts to remove the problems with the corridor in south Delhi.
“Let us find a mechanism to remove the problem to save BRT,” the court said.
“The concept is not bad and there is no defect in design but sudden surge of traffic in the middle of the stretch brings a bad name to the entire project,” the bench added.
The court order came after going through the report filed by a Central Road Research Institute’s (CRRI) official, explaining the procedure adopted while conducting a trial run on the BRT.
The court was hearing a petition filed by NGO Nyay Bhoomi for smooth traffic movement on the 5.7 km BRT corridor between Ambedkar Nagar and Moolchand and government permission to allow cars to ply in a road land reserved for buses.
The court said the problem lay with the BRT stretch from Sheikh Sarai to Chirag Delhi, which was only 900 metres out of the 5.8 km total operational stretch.
The bench pointed to the heavy traffic coming from the Sheikh Sarai side and suggested rerouting some buses. It asked the CRRI to discuss with the transport department and submit a report by Tuesday and fixed Sep 11 as the next date of hearing.
The petitioner had pointed out that most of the time the bus lane remained free with the situation on other lanes, meant for cars and other vehicles, remaining chaotic and the people getting stuck in jams for hours.
The court earlier directed the government to continue with the arrangement suggested by the CRRI during a trial run on the corridor between May 12-23 till its final order.
The CRRI model allowed all vehicles to use the reserved bus lane.