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India AgendaAHMEDABAD EXPERIENCE

Urban transport debate:Is BRTS the answer?

B Y R A H U L C H A N D R A N

rahul.c@livemint.com·························AHMEDABAD

Movement of passen-ger traffic on the30km bus rapid tran-

sit system (BRTS), aptly nameJanmarg (passage for people),in the eight months since itwas commissioned, has risennearly four times to 60,000passengers a day in July. Fur-ther, surveys show that one intwo passengers were thosewho had earlier walked, orused private vehicles or alter-native public transport.

Even the user experienceseems to have been pleasant.Most Ahmedabad residents,even those that do not use thesystem regularly, say BRTScuts 15-30 minutes in journeytime to Kankaria, a lakefrontarea in east Ahmedabad. “Go-ing to Kankaria by regular roadwould take us not less than 45minutes. But on the BRTS, it isless than 15 minutes,” saidRuhi Lal, whose residence is inVastrupur, currently not a stopon BRTS. According to her,once the network is complete,it will become easier for her tocommute to the workplace.

The alacrity with which citi-zens of Ahemdabad have takento BRTS has settled the debate

on urban transport, at least inGujarat, and the AhmedabadMunicipal Corporation, whichoperates 41 dedicated buseson BRTS, is now proceedingwith plans to add another10km by end-August and even-tually, 217km in all.

The Ahmedabad experienceis significant, especially be-cause town planners view thisas the best way to address theproblem of urban transport,especially in the context of asharp spurt in privately ownedvehicles. Vehicle sales in India,including those of three-wheelers, two-wheelers, carsand commercial vehicles, havenearly doubled in the last sev-en years, increasing from 6.8million in 2003-04 to 12 mil-lion in 2009-10. What’s hap-pening in Ahmedabad is alsoimportant, because the onlyother experience of this naturein India, BRTS in Delhi, haslargely failed in the first phase.

While the early experiencesin Ahmedabad have been posi-tive, analysts warn that unlessrun well, systems such as BRTScould run into problems invery crowded areas.

“I think the bus rapid transitsystem works well in citieswhere you can to some extentregulate car movement,” saidArvind Mahajan, an executivedirector with audit and con-sulting firm KPMG AdvisoryServices Pvt. Ltd, adding thatthe real test would come whenit was implemented in areas

that had a lot of mixed modesof traffic.

The experienceA few reasons underlying

Ahmedabad’s successful expe-rience flow from unique char-acterisitics of the city that maybe difficult to replicate acrossthe country.

BRTS comprises two accesscontrolled single-lane carriage-ways with a median in between,which broadens into a commonbus stop in the middle of theroad. On either side of theBRTS carriageway, city trans-port buses, autorickshaws andthe other modes of transportvie for two lanes of road space.

Unlike Delhi, Ahmedabadhas less traffic congestion. Ac-cording to data from a 2008study on traffic and transpor-tation strategies, Ahmedabad’slower geographical spreadmeans city residents travelmuch less per trip than Delhi.According to the data, whichwas based on numbers report-ed by cities in 2007-08,Ahmedabad residents on anaverage travelled 6.2km per tripper day, as opposed to 10.2kmin Delhi, 11.9km in Mumbaiand 9.6km in Bangalore.

The Ahmedabad BRTS dif-fers from Delhi in another keyaspect. Only specifically identi-fied buses ply on the network.Regular Ahmedabad transportservice buses ply on regularroads. They aren’t allowed ac-cess to the dedicated lane.

“Here it is a success. In Delhi,it failed,” said Pradeep Chaw-da, a professional driver, who’d

heard about the city’s problemswith BRTS when he drove somecustomers to Delhi recently.

While planning BRTS, theplanners decided to avoid ear-marking dedicated bus lanes inarterial roads. Instead, as H.M.Shivananda Swamy, a planningexpert and professor of urbantransport at the Centre for En-vironmental Planning andTechnology, who helped de-sign the corridor, puts it, theplanners chose to “focus onbusy places, not busy roads”.

To be sure, Ahmedabad’s de-velopment as a ring-radial city—a city, much like Delhi, thatevolved in concentric circleswith radial roads—definitelyhelped transport planners. Ac-cording to Swamy, in the caseof Ahmedabad it ensured thatpeople were on the road muchless on an average, when com-pared with other cities.

The debateIn some ways Swamy and his

team are at the centre of theongoing debate on the futureof public transport. As many as590 million people—or roughly40% of India’s population—will live in urban areas by2040. According to one schoolof thought, BRTS is the cheap-er and hence more effectivemethod; the other favours aMetro network. But there aresome, like Swamy, who believethat it does not have to be acase of either-or and can actu-ally be a mix.

Swamy’s office is clutteredwith city maps and books ontransport planning, while the

walls of an adjoining room arefestooned with Google maps oflarge cities around the world.His students have traced theoutlines of different classes ofroads onto these maps as a wayof comparing transport plansfor these cities. In anotherroom, a large-scale map ofKolkata covers much of thewall. The students are trying toevolve—as a project—the idealtransportation plan for Kolkata.

Swamy stresses that the de-bate is not about choosing be-tween BRTS or the Metro.“We’ve reserved one corridorfor Metros. Suburban rail—weare looking at seriously. Wedid not argue that BRT is an al-ternative to Metro. We don’tthink that is the way to plan forcities. Multi-modal is impor-tant,” he said.

Arguing similarly, I.P.Goutam, the Ahmedabad mu-nicipal commissioner, said,“Before government, there aretwo issues. (Whether to) mod-ernize AMTS (Ahmedabad Mu-nicipal Transport Service) orcity bus services of the city andintroduce either BRTS or Met-ro in Ahmedabad. At that pointof time (2006), Ahmedabad’spopulation was about 14 lakhsor so.”

In 2006, several local agen-cies together decided that thecity should first have a BRTS.The Metro project wasn’t ruledout. But BRTS was selected as abetter option, Goutam said.

“If a person is joining a job,private or government, he willfirst look for a house. And sec-ond, look for some kind of atwo-wheeler...whatever hissalary will match. Because ur-ban transport is not giving hima dependable transport sys-tem. Because our city is notplanned on the basis of publictransport availability.”

Goutam said the problemwas exacerbated because exist-ing public transport servicesrarely kept to time, forcingpeople to buy their own vehi-cles. And once people buy ve-hicles, road space for publictransport reduces.

Some experts say that in thedeveloping country context,with a large number of poorpeople, there are additionalchallenges such as ensuringthe right mix of public trans-port options that take into ac-count the ability of the con-sumers to pay.

“The big challenge for devel-oping countries like India is tokeep a balanced transport mixthat provides adequate acces-sibility for people and goods.Currently, India is rapidly mo-

torizing as a result of its veryfast economic growth, and lackof convenient public and activetransport facilities, but it stillhas the majority of trips by foot,bicycle and public transport,”said Dario Hidalgo, a seniortransport engineer for theWorld Resources Institute Cen-ter for Sustainable Transport.

Hidalgo was part of a panelthat awarded the Janmarg thisyear’s sustainable transportaward—an award given annu-ally to cities worldwide. Lastyear’s winner was New Yorkcity mayor Michael Bloomb-erg. “It is very important to atleast maintain the currentmodal split (small share ofauto, large share of public andactive transport), to avoid cat-astrophic increases in fuelconsumption, air pollution,green house gas emissions,congestion and road traffic in-juries and deaths,” he said.

The choice, to a large extent,will also be influenced by theunderlying capital costs. Thefirst phase of the Delhi Metrocost some Rs10,571 crore, oraround Rs162 crore per km.The first BRTS phase of 12.5kmcost Rs96 crore, with the entire90km network expected to costRs1,000 crore.

Umesh Varma, an activistwith Citizens for Better PublicTransport in Hyderabad, a civilsociety organization that hasbeen fighting against the city’splanned elevated Metro railproject, said the project shouldbe immediately scrapped as itis “highly expensive” comparedwith alternatives such as BRTS,both in terms of capital cost perkm and passenger fares.

“Metros are not a solution bythemselves in any city. Metrosare part of the transport system,and should be targeted for thevery high demand corridors,above 50,000 passengers perhour per direction, becausetheir cost is very high ($60-150million/km or aroundRs283-707 crore/km). For allother corridors (below 50,000passengers per hour per direc-tion), it is possible to handle thetraffic operations with buses ifthe full BRT concepts are ap-plied integrally,” Hidalgo said.

Ahmedabad seems to haveproved that.

C.R. Sukumar in Hyderabadcontributed to this story.

A well planned publictransport system canmeet environmentalobjectives and serveneeds of commuters

Smooth drive: The bus rapid transit system in Ahmedabad has brought relief to the lives of commuters.

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