BRT in IndiaDelhi Case study

What is Delhi HCBS• Delhi HCBS is not a BRT system. It is primarily a road infrastructure project.

It was not conceived as a public transit system but as road redesign and lane segregation project.

• Passenger origin-destination studies were not the basis of creating an efficient public transit system which serves the requirement of passengers

• All existing buses (including, Delhi Transport Corporation owned, Blue Line private route licensed buses, minibuses, school buses) use the bus corridor.

• Only one corridor, which is a single straight road of 15km has been designed and is under construction. Other corridors are being studied but are nowhere near being development. The corridors are not connected to each other to form a good network. Rather, they are disjointed sections of road spread around the city.

• There are many power centers in Delhi which means that there is little coordination between various agencies like Municipal Corporation, Police (under national govt.), DDA, Transport Department (under state govt.), PWD etc.

• No bus route rationalization was done on the first corridor. Buses can enter and exit the corridor at any intersection.

• The bus flows, especially in the northern section, is well above 300buses/hr. This means that the chances of buses getting stuck on the bus corridor are very high. No rationalization exercise has been done to reduce the bus numbers but increase overall capacity. Bus flows on pilot corridor are of the order of 165-170 buses/hr with passenger flow of ~13500-14000 pphpd. The system, as it is designed, cannot manage such numbers.

• HCBS bus stops are on the left side to allow access to all types of buses. Passengers wanting to change routes would have to across the intersection to change bus.

• Automatic Vehicle Tracking of majority of the buses using the corridor is not done. A simplistic real time passenger information system is being tested after system got operational.

• Ticketing is business as usual – Onboard; paper tickets directly given by a conductor to passengers. There is no interchange possible since ticketing is done directly by private operator with no central control except distance based fare structure regulation. A few DTC buses have electronic paper ticket dispensing machines.

What are the issues with Delhi HCBS

This results in large queues being formed at intersection. The intersections are chocked during peak hour.

Bus stops are at the intersection, with two parallel platforms with 2/3 bays each. HCBS needs 18m at the intersection reducing number of waiting lanes

available for mixed traffic to only 3 lanes.

Existing mixed vehicle traffic is very high in Delhi, mostly comprising cars.

Signal phasing in Delhi HCBS

Green time per BRT phase is 8% while green time for critical flow direction of mixed traffic is under 30%.

Since buses can enter and exit at any intersection, this necessitates a 6 phase traffic signal system.

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• Advantage to passengers is relatively marginal since their origin and destination do not lie on the bus corridor. Many passengers have a relatively small part of their trip on the corridor

• The number of special buses for BRT which would run only on the corridor is a small percentage of the total buses running on the bus-way.

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Delhi HCBS – Bus routes and corridor• More than 60% of buses use less than 2 km of the corridor!

• Nearly 90% of buses have less than 5km of their route on the corridor. This means that many buses would frequently enter and exit from the corridor.

Buses do not dock near the platform forcing passengers to board and alight in unsafe manner

Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Even new buses cannot dock close enough to the station

Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Bus lane is very narrow and buses end up hitting bus stops and damaging infrastructure

Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Poor bus maintenance and bus breakdown on corridor is high blocking the bus lanes

Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Long bus queues at bus stops force people to board and alight anywhere along the queue

Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Passengers unsure of where their bus will come keep shuttling between the two parallel bus platforms

Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Absence of crossing facility as per desire line of pedestrians (at the rear of station) causes people to access in unsafe manner

Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Pedestrian signals should not mislead

Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern