By IANS,
New Delhi : For the bus rapid transport (BRT) system to be effective in tackling congestion in Indian cities, emphasis must be laid on how the system operates rather than just design and planning, experts said here Saturday.
“The main constraints of the BRT in India is that the investment and planning focuses on infrastructure and design rather than operational plans,” said O.P. Aggarwal, managing director Urban Mass Transit Company Ltd.
Aggarwal was speaking at the Convention on City Development: Sustainability and Legal Interface organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
The panel of urban transportation experts also said that the BRT corridors being planned in around five cities including the national capital need to focus on the end user and have to be planned in coordination with local municipal bodies.
Aggarwal said: “The ideal mass transport system is one that has door to door access, where fare is affordable to actual end users, minimises travel time, is safe and comfortable. So for planning all this the end user and local body should be involved.”
The panel that also included Dilip Chenoy of Society of Indian Automobiles Manufacturers (SIAM) and Volvo Buses country marketing head Sohanjeet Randhawa.
Randhawa said: “BRT will take time for implementation. It may take anywhere between two to eight years for any effect to be seen. The fact is that 20 percent users (private vehicle owners) are using 80 percent of the roads and vice versa — for the eighty stuck on less road space the public transport will need to be made effective.”
According to CII’s theme paper for the convention, the vehicular congestion in urban cities is increasing manifold.
While two wheelers are growing at 15 to 20 percent per year, cars have been growing at rate of 10 to 15 percent.
From 63.9 million vehicles in 2008 — that include two wheelers, three wheelers, high and light commercial vehicles as well as cars — the vehicle population is estimated to increase by nearly 90 percent to 121.3 million by 2015.
The Delhi government has envisioned an integrated multi-modal network of public transport consisting of the Metro rail of 400 km, Mono rail and BRT system running on 26 corridors of 310 km.
The pilot BRT corridor connecting south Delhi’s Ambedkar Nagar to the Moolchand hospital was criticised as having been planned shoddily. Although the stretch still causes massive traffic jams for car users it is being extended to Delhi Gate after it received a good response from bus users.
Other cities like Pune, Jaipur, Ahmedabad too have planned to implement the BRT.
The panel meanwhile questioned the efficacy of the Delhi Metro for addressing congestion, saying that the system did not cater to the large masses since it was not affordable.
The paper also pointed out that ridership on the operational public mass transport is lower than what was estimated at time of planning.
“Lower ridership makes many services financially unsustainable…In spite of strong subsidies almost every public transit system cannot generate sufficient income to cover its operating and capital costs,” the paper said.