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Naveen,

It seems you pluck excerpts from my review only when it suits you. Its a review and has to be looked at as a whole not in parts. The corridor argument is in favour of trains not BRT.

Support for BRT is in the context of then passionate lobby of Sky bus systme proponants.

What my review aims to actually suggest, but seems to have been overlooked by you, is my view on getting basics right first, then other stuff (be it lanes as I suggest or BRT). In fact I don't favour Metro as well - my argument being that only when you have a well established TBS with sound fundamentals will any other development be appropriately informed. What my review does not make amply clear is that I like the British model more than BRT as proposed currently - this is a position evolved through ongoing research of facts as they stand on how BRT projects are being handled in India.

I will continue to say, costlier projects because we cannot enforce law is a bad argument and faulty in its logic. You may call is a nescessary evil but not logical.

I keep asking why Mumbai manages to enforce law better (forget the West for a moment) - a ricksahw does not dare enter south -central Mumbai where they re banned from. The difference is visible, but it says a lot about WILL to enforce law.

Being a psychiatrist, I can tell you humans are same everywhere. Western society is not any more ethical, they are forced to be that way. The approach is simple - educate first, reward good behaviour and punish the bad behaviour.

An example - UK roads a were killer roads in 1930's. Killing 7500 a year when vehicles on road were just 2.5 million. Then in 1931 was born the Highway Code, 24 pages long. The driving test started in 1935. Both have evolved - the Highway code is now 145 pages long, the test - has a theory componenent with hazard perception module. The vehicels have nnow increased to over 30million. But the accidents have now gone up fifteen times, instead the fatalities are 3.5k

The fact that Highway code is mandatory reading without which one cannot survive is borne by it being the 15th best seller in 2007 (each year it outsells many books).

Thus the BRT driver who is frustrated by chaotic drivers - the answer is not handful of BRT but how we reform road behaviour.

Again, like everything else, I argue for basics first. Sunder committee gets closer but our Nation 60 years on still does not have a Highway code, a theory test and a reformed practical test backed with law enforcement is needed.

Finally here is what I advocate -

1. A bus based transport where basics are strong in all respects - route rationalisation, frequency rationalisation, a business model that offers competitive tickets.
2. Bus lanes as I suggest - simply because they are the next easiest step, cheap and not much to loose from. Why not Pilot one or two when it will do no harm.
3. At least point 1 above should be satisfied - only then can BRT as proposed by Delhi IIT will work. This too will need law enforcement - no one can garuntee that other vehicels will not ply on these routes, neither can anyone garuntee that shanties will not develop on the rather lovely / homely bus stops.
4. Demand management is crucial - either Singapore style or ensuring that migration patterns change. Mumbai for example even if and when it gets a Metro by  2020 - the 10,000 migrants per day rate make no system viable.

ASJ

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I must say I am an outsider but then it gives me a different perspective and it up to others to agree or disagree.

I wonder why 10,000 buses, how has this number been calculated, where will they keep them, how will they maintain them, etc needs answering.

If Mumbai had 3.5 k buses and carry 4+ million passenger trips and Bangalore already has 5000, why double them in 3 years? Its fine as long as the figures and models show how the system will work.

For a city like Pune where I can on paper show (though I won't as its PMTs job) that 1000 buses could do well - I must say Bangalore citizens are lucky - but that still does not satisfy my questions.

Yes, PIL / RTI - get the stats first. D-IIT and PMC/PMT in Pune have kept figures a secret (if there were any).

Now back to BRT - here is a check list of what stood out in Bagota model, someone could do an exercise for their respective cities and make their minds up.

In Bagota, planning for PT began in 1940s. BRT came about because they did not have money for light rail, great, a challenge turned in to an opportunity to innovate. The population size was under 2 million (now slightperhaps more), vehicle ownership at start was low. The BRT trunks spread in different directions, land use was regulated to ensure growth along BRT routes, each station was planned to have development around it so once one gets off a huge amount can be done by walking around, feeder buses remained, old business places where BRT could not reach were purposefully in planned manner made insignificant as businesses moved along the BRT and at least a handful of places are vehicle free. Articulated buses, pre board tickets, one ticket across all travel, one step entry, automated doors allowing dozens to get in / out within 20 seconds, sidewalks, crossways with lifts ....

Now at least with Pune, BRT is not a proactive but a reactive measure. Land use is not planned to ensure growth along BRT, BRT is being introduced on any patch within the city (and they have almost a dozen) where roads of 100+ feet are possible - in short it may have nothing to do with (at least some routes) whether the people will travel on these routes as they may have nothing to do with their usual destinations. NGOs have asked for data but got nothing. Crossways are the zebra's (currently we know how many people respect them) not near the bus stops - at least 3-4 have died - disabled and infirm don't figure in the overall vision at all and the bus stops are awful (despite spending money). Pre-ticketing is a distant dream, pricing strategy no one has heard of, and brand new buses have no facility to be washed, left to gather dust and eventually rust, they look 5 years old in one years time.

Ticketing I keep touching up on, Pune has no business model.  Bagota uses 10 or so pvt companies. Pune already does this, it has 800 buses of their own, 200 are contracted and sub-contracted, untrained drivers and staff included. In contrast Bagota and UK use private operators who are heavily regulated by the authorities. Penalties are levied and licences cancelled / not renewed if benchmark standards are not met with.

So long as Bangalore or any other city keeps some of these things in mind - they may do well, but not otherwise.

ASJ

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The Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Government of India, has displayed a report on 'Bus Transport Systems' on its website (www.petroleum.nic.in/ch_15.pdf), salient excerpts from which are re-produced below: 1) Promoting public bus transport should be viewed as a priority in any strategy to improve urban road traffic and in controlling air pollution from automobiles. The country can ill afford the luxury of unchecked growth of private vehicle population. The costs to the country's economy in terms of higher fuel consumption and to the society in terms of health are significant enough to warrant urgent action. 2) Clearly, there is a strong case for promoting private enterprise in meeting transport needs in urban areas. 3) An aspect of public policy that impacts on provision and expansion of public transport either by state owned utilities or by private entrepreneurs, relates to the unviable fare structures imposed by the authority. 4) With improved efficiency, the fare structure can continue to remain low while still providing for overall viability of the operations. The 'policy' enunciated in the first posting in my blog http://traffic-transport-solutions.blogspot.com/ bases itself on these recommendations. Yes, for a successful PIL, a lot of inputs are required. I have already collected a lot, which I can perhaps share with the PRAJA. Further, I don't know how many of the PRAJA members have personally used, or atleast interacted with regular users of BMTC services. If they attempt that, they will realise how much easier life can be if BMTC can be made more customer-friendly than it presently is. I have attempted many things, and am now quite convinced that only effective competition can bring about any real change. And, the urgency of the matter is that it is because of the incapacity and inefficiency of the monopoly BMTC that the percentage of people using bus services has stagnated at some 50% or below over so many years. This has to rise steadily to some 80% (atleast for commuting) if we are to get out of our present grid-locked status. Should we still continue to be soft-pedalling this issue?

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asj, i have have two broad categoeries of issues:
#1. technologies
#2. organization


technologies
from my early reading i remember reading somewhere that there was a segment starting at swargate and heading south from there. but the north arm disappeared in the pet area(shukrawarpet?) and then resurfaced somewhere else.

irrespective of the technologies used, a system made up of short disconnected segments is no system at all. in 99.99 percent of indian cities, just as in pune, a continuous bus network is not possible without:
#1 widening roads
#2 rezoning (most arterial roads have businesses abutting them)

both options involve lot of litigation and resistance = RsRsRs.

connecting swargate to deccan via shukrawarpet is the most natural of corridors in pune. say on shukrawarpet road you install rising bollards, the businesses on that road will go hammer & tongs. in bangalore we have a nandigram type of situation developing on CMH road, where less than 50 properties out of 2000 on the road are to be acquired at true market rates for metro. in mumbai, on poddar street the nightingale sang in protest, IIRC. this will repeat ad nauseum, in city after city.

our cities are not designed nor do we have governance systems to implement all these western systems without some changes. we cannot do a monkey-see-monkey-do natak like they did with that brt line in delhi.
from what i have observed, there are two types of road networks:
#1: street network which provides access to all properties in the city
#2: arterial network which provides access to all regions of the city

here we confuse street network to arterial network. and use the street as an artery and the artery like a street. actually we have no arteries. we only have streets, irrrespective of how wide they are because we have no zoning.

here the arteries are not merely painted thick, the network is only connected to the rest of the network at some points, otherwise the arterial network and the capillary network are physically separate.

in the broad category of technologies i see, only mono seems workable without widening or rezoning. it is costly and does not have the capacity of metro. but it has better capacity than buses & if you factor in RsRsRs for widening & rezoning, mono cost will prolly rival brt cost. it looks like mono needs very little space and physical altering. and perhaps, in the 21 century that is the price we have to pay for the luxury of harboring 18th century practices. BUT, if i had veto powers, i would still veto mono. It is proprietary technology. Even the width of the single track is not standardized, forget trains & carraiges and fuel & drive systems. world over there seems to be no movement in trying to standardize any aspects of mono. so foreign companies, are ruled out in my book (royalities). perhaps if indian railways can come up with some standards, if not technology, then mono will fix all problems.
(that skybus is a bit shaky.) i would make laloo my family diety and gopalganj my mecca, if makes for some funds for a serious look into standards for metro and incubates desi mono R&D team.


organization
can you tell us about organization of all these planning & execution in pune? how much local expertise do they have with respect to urban planning transportation planning and so on. and how the different planners are structured.

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Hi!

Bus tops and signals will apply and hence there will soppage time is what I was saying. There seems to be a view that travel should be virtually non-stop. I have been on Mumbai buses, London buses and trains in both these cities (underground in London)- there are stoppages, signal failures etc. Hence the sole focus on speed is a falacy. As pointed out, unless the BRT routes are of significant lenghts, speed will not matter.

Further the argument that Mumbai had a public transport pre-dating private vehicles and hence the uptake of public transport is high is incorrect. There are many factors - the service reliability, frequency, route rationalisation, costing of tickets. The cost of tickets for the third rate PMT service in Pune is same as that when using a two wheeler. Why will anyone then use the bus.

If Mumbai citizens use buses and trains only because they predate other auto modes and in other cities its the opposite, what evidence is there to suggest that having a BRT will make someone in Bangalore or Pune switch to buses?

Fundamentals of a good bus service is a big topic, for starters please read

Pune Caught in a Whirlpool - Can a Modern Public Transport System Rescue it

The above looks at PMT as it is today, what it could be (plenty of suggestions). Any reader of this review should then answer the question - Should Pune's basic bus service model be reformed or should it consider a splattering of BRT routes as a solution. In Pune they don't have bus garages, brand new buses are kept overnight to be vandalised, should this not be looked at before BRT? PMT contracts and sub-contracts the buses, no one knows if the drivers are trained, mini-buses are running on BRT routes (where is the 'mass' transport bit gone?) and still worse killing pedestrians.

I had submitted a petition to Pune Corporation with the above article and a CD Resource Pack on Bus Priority acquired from DOT, UK - a summary is available as a download (click here). The point is, many inner city areas can never provide for 100 feet wide roads. Its easy to say - dedicated route from Flora Fountain to Andheri - but there is no scope to increase width on any of these roads on the stretch.

Instead look at the London model (and someone has suggested Singapore is similar). Any road with two lanes on one side - straight away, one lane is coloured Red and becomes a bus lane. Majority are bus lanes during rush hours and working days only. Thus these lanes are not un-used (unlike BRT) during other times.

Because existing road width is sufficient, no additional costs are incurred. Bus Lanes remain on Left / Periphery of the road not median. This has potential for problems on some stretches where cars wish to get in and out of off-lanes / drive-ways. But this can be minimised as shown here in my diagramatic overview of Principles of Bus Lanes

The whole point is - there are more cost-effective methods. A peripheral bus lane as per the London model has its other advantages - The biggest being savings in not having to build median bus stops, safe crossways (ideally should be subways / overhaed crossovers with facility for disabled).

London also has done the clever thing of allowing cycles on bus lanes. The number of cyclists (as in Pune or Banagalore) is so small that it actually does not matter. UK also introduced a law asking / demanding that all other vehicels give way to buses - thus if a bus has to change lanes (to overtake a cycle) other cars GIVE WAY.

Some people have argued that London model won't work in India, because the lanes are not dedicated and hence will be abused by other road users (much like how the 1 or 2 cycle lanes in Pune are now used by motorcyclists). This is a matter of law enforcement and hence should not be a cause of considering more costly projects.

Feeder routes - this is yet another fundamental basic. Flora Fountain to Andheri - you could have a BRT going along the sea by spending crores and crores on road expansion. But What will someone do if they travel from Andheri to Fountain but work at CST, Colaba, Fort areas, Metro / Dobhi-Talao etc - feeder's are needed. Without them BRT will fail, its not too difficult to imagine this.

Hope this helps where I stand, I am not anti-BRT, I ask for a wider view of how things stand. Much of what I say is limited to my what has happened in Pune. I make it an example with the hope that other cities do not do what Pune did.

ASJ

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