The Hindu : New Delhi News : While Delhi dithers, Bejing launches High Capacity Bus

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 16, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

While Delhi dithers, Bejing launches High Capacity Bus

By Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

NEW DELHI, FEB.15. Even as Delhi, which had jumped on to the High Capacity Bus System -- claimed to be an innovative, cost-effective, safe and reliable transport strategy that segregate road traffic and allows preferential treatment to buses -- in 2002 continues to drag its feet over its implementation, China has stolen a march and launched a 6 km corridor of the system in Beijing in less than a year's time.

Moreover, India's northern neighbour has also chalked out plans for having the system in place in 12 of its cities with Shanghai leading the way with a total network of around 250 kilometres, while Delhi is yet to even create a special organisation for carrying out the implementation of the project.

At a time when most developing countries are taking to this system for its inherent advantages, the Delhi Government has after making all the right moves initially now started dithering on the implementation as a result of which the pilot project covering a distance of nearly six km from Ambedkar Nagar to Moolchand in South Delhi is already a year behind schedule and the project still appears a distant dream to the members of the Transport Research and Injury prevention Programme (TRIPP) of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi who had designed the project.

Though the project management consultants, RITES, had floated preliminary tenders in December 2004 after which about half-a-dozen companies were shortlisted for the detailed tenders, it will be some time before the project gets functional as now the talk of having electric trolley buses on the route is doing the rounds at Delhi Secretariat.

Dr. Geetam Tiwari, who along with Prof. Dinesh Mohan, was the chief architect of the project, said HCBS is suitable to the conditions of Delhi as it is cost effective -- with a kilometre of corridor costing less than Rs 7 crores -- and is capable of carrying nearly 35,000 passengers per hour per direction.

With the critical element on Delhi roads that influences the efficiency of all motorised modes being the presence of non-motorised traffic, the system seeks to benefit all road users by segregating the slow-moving traffic and allowing preferential treatment to buses.

The system would utilise both the existing fleet of buses and allow introduction of new low-chassis buses that would possess new integrated with information and communication technologies for optimising flow, passenger movement, ticketing and bus scheduling. Also, HCBS systems typically use low floor buses to reduce dwell time, make travel more convenient and make possible use by disabled persons easier.

Costing a fraction of rapid transit systems like the Metro, Skybus or Monorail, HCBS is already very popular in several South American countries as also in South East Asia.

However, Dr. Tiwari said the delays here cannot be done away with till a special purpose organisation like the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation is created for the purpose of implementing the project as there are several agencies involved in the plan. But while one like PWD is concerned only with construction, another like Transport Department only looks after transport management, and a third like Municipal Corporation of Delhi is only into maintenance. In such a scenario a special organisation is needed for providing public-private partnership and coordination with all concerned agencies.

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