COMMENTS

There is no big plan as of now for Old Airport Road - that would be a candidate.

NICE road etc, please save for later. BRT on expressways are questionable (because Buses can anyway move fast, plus people don't live on expressways), please. Avoid general discussions (which could be endless) and keep to the feasibility of BRT on some of the Big10 / Circle routes. At least when talking up a concrete project to take a BRT demand report to BBMP/BDA/BMTC, make best efforts to back a running horse instead of fresh ideation. Chances would be a lot lot better.

Moving to technicalities - are there any parallels in the world for "part-BRT", as in small tricks and provisions to speed up the buses as opposed to through and through elevated or at-grade-dedicated bus corridor?

Single lane BRT (just the way railways manage two way trains on single track) is certainly an option (because BBMP or BDA or any other agency in the city does not have the guts nor foresight to acquire land and widen roads to add pavements or dedicated bus lanes. Anyway). Think of things like

• Center lane for buses. This single "track" becomes the road divider of sorts.
• Two "tracks" at places where there is some width available. These are the "stations".
• Magic boxes at few signals to let the bus "tracks" through.
• The "track" would be used by "express" services, which will have fewer "stops". Use regular mixed-traffic buses to go a bit back or front to your local bus stop. Sort of like Railway's super-fast trains vs regular passenger trains.

Doable? Examples available anywhere?

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Hey Vasanth, no problem. this is building up well. we will all dig deep once we get to a project to write concrete demand report.

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The city's planners are making an attempt to prioritise public transport and also bring about a semblance of lane discipline on Bengaluru's chaotic roads. After trying and failing to enforce autorickshaw lanes, they are now planning to give BMTC buses a dedicated lane.

The Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT) will pilot a BMTC bus lane on the Old Airport Road, starting from Trinity Circle to Hope Farm junction in the IT hub of Whitefield. This is in response to the BMTC seeking dedicated lanes for its buses on 12 roads.

For the full text of the report in the Economic Times, click here.

From a reading of the article, the plan appears to be only for a 'priority lane', and not a dedicated lane, and well, I'd say "thank God for that". My reasoning is explained by one look at the pictures accessible here. As such, I wouldn't recommend BRTS even for our Big-10 routes, or even the outer ring road. Perhaps, the Peripheral Ring Road could incorporate that; but, then again, would it be more economical compared say an elevated METRO line, considering the huge real estate costs involved?

The Bus Priority Lane scheme is understood to be working well in the city of London. But, that's largely because they have the "Transport for London", which is a regulatory authority that oversees the functioning of all the players involved. An equivalent of that, the BMLTA (Bangalore Metropolitan Land Transport Authority), was instituted in the city almost a decade back. But, it was never adequately empowered, and consequently, we now have the BMTC, Transport Dept, DULT, Traffic Police, Metro, Commuter Rail (when it happens), etc etc, all working in their own silos. In such a scenario, there's little hope that the Bus Priority Lane is going to go too far.

Now, the purpose of all of these one would think is to make people switch to use of public transport. When that can be achieved more effectively, and at no cost to the government (meaning tax payer), through facilitation of bus services aggregation, a user experience of which is detailed here, can the government be obstructing it, just because it could affect BMTC's revenues? Is BMTC's revenues more important or overall public interest? That's a question that has been elaborated more on, here.

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Naveen - noted your points abt Old Airport Road. Let us detail priority ideas for this route in a separate dedicated post.

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Half hearted attempt like done in New Delhi would only be resulting in failure of such a system. Priority lane will never work in India since there is no lane driving at all in India. We need a segregated lane seperated by a divider.

London and Bangalore are on the opposite sides w.r.t. traffic enforcement with thousands of cctv cameras monitoring bus lanes in london, number plate detection and fining. I don't think this will be successful and this is an anti publicity exercise for BRTS, which is not a BRTS. 

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