Latest on BRT: Bus lane to shut at night

Before this please read the following blog: (in case u have not read)

What went Wrong ?? : BRT Chaos at Delhi. (click here)

and now as per habit I proceed with News TOI 27th May 2008 and after that you can read my thoughts on same.

NEW DELHI: Alarmed by the growing number of accidents on the BRT corridor between Ambedkar Nagar and Moolchand, the transport department has decided to shut down the corridor dedicated to bus movement between 11 pm to 5 am. This is likely to come into effect from Tuesday night.
"It was seen that most of the accidents have happened during the night or early morning. Many of these accidents happen because pedestrians and cars take liberties as there are not too many buses plying at night and then get. As a precautionary measure, we have decided to close the bus lane at night—both to pedestrians and vehicles. By closing the lane, chances of pedestrians or cars trying to get into the corridor and suddenly getting hit by a bus can be averted," senior transport department officials added.
Transport minister Haroon Yusuf has also directed the transport department once again to carry out training programmes for bus drivers plying on this route to sensitise them. "An awareness campaign for commuters and pedestrians using the route has also been proposed," Yusuf added.
In the last one week three people lost their lives to accidents in the BRT corridor. With the recent spate of accidents, the transport department and the government are now having second thoughts about the much hyped Pilot-B project, spanning from Moolchand flyover to Delhi Gate.
The Pilot-B project, made public on May 6, will follow a different design. In the new project, the bus lane will be shifted to the left instead of the centre and there will be three lanes for cars. It is proposed that there will be no medians dividing the lanes. The bus lane will be painted a different colour to create a corridor for the buses. Enforcement by the traffic police is to ensure that the cars don’t run into the lane.
According to a recent assessment by the transport department, however, a bus corridor on the left could be problematic as there are as many as 80 turnings if both sides of the road on the eight-kilometre between Moolchand flyover and Delhi Gate are taken into account. A large number of vehicles on that route might want to take those turns, making it impossible to maintain a free-flowing bus lane.
In an effort to sort out problems on the Pilot-B corridor, the transport department will focus on completing the pedestrian tracks and cycle tracks and widen the road over the next three to four months. The left lane execution on Pilot-B will only begin after that. A senior transport department official said that the Pilot-B project was " going to be an experiment," indicating that there are no guarantees of success.

---------------Long Huh???? sorry for keeping u waiting---
so what do u think but why should u think I am there to think and write and then u comment :D...so in last episode u saw how meticulously planned :P BRT is claiming lives too, do i need to recommend more planning and investigations before a project is implemented on city. I am sure there was no simulations (i say) or biased simulations (experts say) done by planners with literally only talking capabilities and no technical ones. (no offence intended but i cant resist too if Shahrukh can be Aamir's doggy name y not i can name my pets on something)

Post Mortem:

In the new project, the bus lane will be shifted to the left instead of the centre and there will be three lanes for cars. It is proposed that there will be no medians dividing the lanes. The bus lane will be painted a different colour to create a corridor for the buses.

Ohh so they thot that bus lanes should be in center and bust stops on extreme left wow a nice idea and now they realize that NO !!! it should be all in left side since the bus stop can't be in center.
Lovely did u get that a bus was moving in center lane and then when bus stop comes it has to go extreme left to bust stop. So what is maneuvering, can u assume a speeding bus in center all of sudden takes left in front of ur vehicle. Nice planning though

According to a recent assessment by the transport department, however, a bus corridor on the left could be problematic as there are as many as 80 turnings if both sides of the road on the eight-kilometre between Moolchand flyover and Delhi Gate are taken into account. A large number of vehicles on that route might want to take those turns, making it impossible to maintain a free-flowing bus lane

80 turnings and you simulated them. I cant believe if u had i am sure you would have seen the chaos created by you . Ok let me give some brain to these dumbos problem I suggest that their is something called Bus priority at signals so technically two instruments must be placed few meters away from the signal on bus lane and they should detect the bus (loop detectors) . The bus once moving on lane is detected the signal should give a priority to bus and stop all other vehicles and similarly if the green time (time when its green signal yaar :) ) for signals and queue length of other traffic is more then give a longer duration and u can stop the bus . This has been done in one of mine and my friends work a paper : "Simulating bus priority system for an urban corridor in Mumbai City. " Jigesh N Bhavsar, Sushant Sharma and S.L Dhingra, in Proc. 11th World Conference on Transportation Research 2007, University of California, Berkeley, USA, June. 2007. (Presented at WCTR -2007, Berkeley USA ). [THIS IS NOT AT ALL FOR MY PUBLICITY :)]. We did it using VISSIM simulation tool for traffic and it gave pretty good results and we validated it at Borivali Junction at Bombay. I know its practically a little difficult but better than this kind of chaos.


In an effort to sort out problems on the Pilot-B corridor, the transport department will focus on completing the pedestrian tracks and cycle tracks and widen the road over the next three to four months.

So now they understand who is important and who bears the brunt of all chaos. Public dear general public and that too poor ones who have to either walk or cycle and whose life is not costlier for planners.

A senior transport department official said that the Pilot-B project was " going to be an experiment," indicating that there are no guarantees of success.

Please ask your "senior transport planner" to put a layman on work common sense is mightier than too educated brain. No dont jump on conclusion as fast and consider that too much of education ruins everything infact it opens the doors which u wont have seen without depth of knowledge.

But one thing of which I am pretty unsure that if they can't guarantee success why are they "Experts" .

Really is it Vaastu

Again this time too I will be targeting the news...Please read the link below for people who haven't heard of the word Vāstu Śāstra, also spelled Vaastu Shastra(Sanskrit vāstu "site, building, house" and śāstra "treatise, instruction") is one of the traditional Hindu canons of town planning and architecture. Vaastu Shastra deals with various aspects of designing and building living environments that are in harmony with the physical and metaphysical forces.

Vastu makes accident-prone roads safe! (Click here)

NAGPUR: In an effort to bring down accidents in the rural parts of the district, the Nagpur rural police are even experimenting with Vastu Shastra, to reduce the 'negative energy' in accident prone zones. Vastu pyramids have reportedly been installed at 12 such places across the district to improve 'vibes'. The cops are monitoring the results to find out more about this phenomenon. As an immediate effect, though, cops asay no accidents have taken place in these accident-prone spots in the past six months!

Really i ask myself , its bad vibes and not people to be blamed for accidents whether the road geometric designer or builder or drivers or pedestrians. Well my cool view is its not the bad vibes in rural areas its unawareness and illiteracy...

Recently there have been a lot of connectivity due to large scale expansion of interstate or national highways most of them run through the villages, So what has happened is the villagers who before used to see a few truck or cars plying on perceived speeds are now witnessing a large number of similar vehicles being driven rashly or at higher speeds.

The experiences are as old as the recent one you go through, and they haven't gone through any sunce 70's of India, owing to slow improvement in highways. So believing their own judgments they try to cross the highways mostly on slow moving tractors or animal driven carts (yes still available), cycles, or as pedestrians and ...........well same applies for straying animals didn't u see many lying in post mortem positions on highways.

A huge number of highways cross villages and rural area in Indian and thus has left a major number of increase in road accident fatalities. Its mostly either the driver losing control or driving rashly or non sober driving or the poor villagers believing their old instincts.

Also recently i have experienced the road geometrics of these newly and fairly fast constructed highways are not at par, If u drive at permissible speed limits and try to traverse a curve at that you are certainly bound to reduce the speed or otherwise leave the road orbit at your speed turning to escape velocity. In fact in geometrics of roads there is always a study done for sight distance and radius of curvature of roads and the maximum speed which is kept for the roads is the one for which curves are also designed for, this is done for comfort of drivers. Since these geometrics are rarely followed by state and central highway construction contractors and builders most of the accident prone or so called bad vibe places are the one lacking these proper geometrics. ( pretty understandable)

So how is vaastu improving that , I hardly believe its improving anything it must be those pyramids getting attraction of drivers rather than normally kept warning signages or cones and the government framing a policy and results to show to public that it has done something that has improved the condition. Frankly to be very honest would have been to teach villagers and prevent the intrusion of straying animals on highways and some over speeding checks to solve it all...N if u still believe the vaastu reduces accidents then ask the straying animals who are losing same number of friends before as they are today.