Recommendations for Safe BRT Design for Indian Cities

Recommendations for safe BRT design for Indian citiesBinoy Mascarenhas, Associate, Urban Transport, EMBARQ India

BRT is emerging has emerged as a cost-effective public transportation alternative for Indian cities

Success stories like the Ahmedabad BRT have changed the question from “Why to do BRT?” to “How to do BRT?” – “What is the most appropriate kind of BRT for my city?”

BRTs are now being developed in many more cities in India, (Surat, Indore, Pune, Naya Raipur, Hubli-Dharwad, etc), with many more cities showing interest..

This decade will be the “tipping point”; with an exponential increase in BRTs, similar to the experience in other parts of the world

The context

BRT is now an established concept …

…but there are some concerns that need to be addressed

What is BRT’s impact on:

Road safety,

Local accessibility

NMT mobility

Road capacity

For BRT to gain a wider acceptance by all stakeholders, it must address these concerns

The context

In 2012 EMBARQ released a draft document on “Traffic Safety for Bus Corridors”

Background

From 2011-12, EMBARQ conducted road safety audits on BRTs (Indore, Delhi, Ahmedabad) and other public transit corridors

Road safety audits on Indian BRTs and other public transit

corridors

Recommendations for safe BRT design for

Indian cities

Many of the flagship BRTs in international cities have the following features:

Large section of the BRT on freeways

Restricted property access to such roads

Little or no pedestrians, no at-grade crossing

High speed

Long routes with large distances between stations

But why a separate document

Some examples … Bogota, Colombia

…and Istanbul, Turkey

… similarly, in Guangzhou, China

Abundant property development along the road edge

Cars are not the dominant motor-vehicle

Bicycles are not the only NMT mode

Very high pedestrian volume

Traffic discipline cannot be taken as a given

Street vendors and immovable obstacles, like utility boxes, trees, temples, etc

Auto-rickshaws as the feeder system to BRT

The Indian context is different:

Abundant road edge property development

Frequent property gates

High right / U-turn demand

High pedestrian volume and

crossing demand

Requirement for parking / waiting

area

Cars are not the dominant motor-vehicle

Safety features (such as bollards along pedestrian crossings) for cars

may not work for 2-wheelers

Safety standards for cars different for 2-wheelers

Very high pedestrian volume

High crossing demand

Need for frequent crossing

opportunites

More footpath width needed

At least in the immediate period, people will continue to flout traffic rules

Safe design is based on “how people will behave”, rather than “how people should behave”

Traffic discipline cannot be taken as a given

Bicycles are not the only NMT mode

Pedestrian crossings and bicycle lanes must be usable by all NMT modes

Street vendors and immovable obstacles

The design must be able to take into consideration, varying levels of available road width

Auto-rickshaws as the feeder system

If auto-rickshaw infrastructure is not provided for, they will make their own ad-hoc arrangements. This can be a safety concern

Data driven: Identifying the main problems through data analysis

Contextual recommendations: There cannot be one solution for all contexts: type, scale, local conditions matter!

Case-study approach: Documenting the international and Indian best-practices for various elements of the BRT

Conceptual designs: Providing conceptual designs that can be suitably adapted for a given context

Impact assessment: Assessing the impact of the design recommendations on BRT operations, road capacity, etc

The approach for this document

Some of the design recommendations

The basic midblock template

The provision of a multi-utility (MU) strip on both sides of the road to accommodate various ancillary uses – parking, street vendor space, rickshaw stand, utility boxes, etc

All other road elements to be of continuous width – the MU strip to accommodate all variations in road width

Frequent pedestrian crossing

Located at high demand areas

Clearly demarcated

Pedestrian refuge areas

Pedestrian crossing

Midblock u-turns

Provided at frequent intervals along long midblock sections

Safely combined with pedestrian crossing

Extension of the pedestrian crossing + u-turn design to accommodate the station

Midblock BRT stations

Only left turn access at minor streets

Improves safety as well as capacity for BRT and main road traffic lanes

Intersection with a minor street

The draft document has been released, and is currently under peer review

The final document will be released later this year

Status