If you are lay man and want to know what's BRT its Bus Rapid Transit, yes you thought exactly right and nothing technical about it, its just a common sense, so in this a separate exclusive bus lane is kept for public buses (mostly) or private or chartered too (sometimes). Some successful history of this common sense/man idea is in Bogota city, first laid by Enrique Penalosa, the former Mayor of Bogota, Colombia, and the visionary leader behind Bogota's Transmilenio BRT system.
I have heard Enrique giving a live talk at Mumbai. He talked about how it can be implemented in India and Mumbai too. He has been propagating the theory of such BRT throughout the world and yes he had been successful also.
Well in India, as I say dumb brain rules (not planners, architects, doctors, scientist and common man). Politicians got fairly impressed by the idea and as BRT is fairly cheap compared to alternative of rail and second it can serve larger number of public meaning number of votes for government. And so everywhere like metro rail demand all the city mayors started crying for BRTs also whether Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Surat etc.
Delhi took this ambitious plan in hands and the pilot run of BRT is historic event for Transportation in India. What happened at Delhi was a mere chaos on implementation without proper study of consequences. In theory the traffic is like a fluid following through channels called road. Now if u want to reserve some part or block you have to understand the simple chaos theory that will prevail . (I hope u know about chaos theory which says a simple fluttering of wing by butterfly can cause a Tornado somewhere also known as "Butterfly Effect"). Anyways it doesn't apply here but partially Yes it did at least Tornado came.
Delhi is one of the city which now has one of most well supported and wide road infrastructure and signal systems. It has state of the art (but badly functioning) SCOOT system i.e optimised signals :P . Quite wide roads adds pleasure to driving experice in Delhi making private vehicles a better option. This status conscious city has average occupancy of car as 1 person per car in 70% of the cars. So why BRT ?
Well the problem was Monster or Killer Blueline buses which i believe must be taking one life everyday, thanks to attitude of the drivers of these buses and the well behaved pedestrians as you can see in images. So government decided to put an end to it replace with BRT since roads had started getting choked given more private vehicle usage.
BRT pilot run would have worked well if proper information dissemination and phase wise implementation had been done. But no government had no time to prove its mettle so it did.
So What went Wrong ?? (Hey its the title of my autobiography too :D)
Click on links below to read what newspaper suggested
- Awarness just four days before trial run (click on links)
- Traffic chaos continues on BRT corridor
- No Implementation Phases
- Unreliable IIT Delhi Planners (Truly they are, read the comment below article too)
- IIT-Delhi experts may be replaced
- IIT dept behind BRT gets funds from bus makers
- BRT project: No govt engineer on board
- City project a poor copy of Bogota original
But there is a positivity associated here, I could find a positive point when a person who went through this chaos said that the route on which he used to drive for 30 minutes , has turned to 1hour 30minutes and if he uses the BRT it will take only 15 minutes for him and thats the key and this was the aim of chief minister of Delhi but she forgot that human instincts are against the change , most of the human race likes a comfortable non challengin and change less life. So what happened on pilto runs of BRT was mere expected, the extent it happened was what a planners should have suggested her and if they did she should have believed and planned a gentle transmigration (shift) of commuters form one mode (car) to other (Bus). The most suffering are the school going kids and their parents as they are now not dropped at home but at bus stops , and it possibly be dangerous as they have to cross streets and all to reach home. As mayor of Bogota said before planning a city think about three most respectable entities that are Old People, children and handicapped.
So did any planner thought about them?
BRT has been fairly unsuccesful at Pune as per last general people opinion and I believe thats more important then statistcis shown by consultancy. I clearly suggest that BRT is a nice option but that depends on case to case basis , as i say similar lines for dealing with girls too ;) .
So what went wrong was not the good intention, its poor implementation , I know this chaos will surely be short lived but lessons learnt will be much deeper for poor/ biased planners and politicians in India.
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