BRT in India

Delhi Case study

 What is Delhi HCBS
• Delhi HCBS is not a BRT system. It is primarily a road infrastructure project.
It was not conceived as a public transit system but as road redesign and
lane segregation project.

• Passenger origin-destination studies were not the basis of creating an

efficient public transit system which serves the requirement of passengers

• All existing buses (including, Delhi Transport Corporation owned, Blue Line
private route licensed buses, minibuses, school buses) use the bus corridor.

• Only one corridor, which is a single straight road of 15km has been
designed and is under construction. Other corridors are being studied but
are nowhere near being development. The corridors are not connected to
each other to form a good network. Rather, they are disjointed sections of
road spread around the city.

• There are many power centers in Delhi which means that there is little
coordination between various agencies like Municipal Corporation, Police
(under national govt.), DDA, Transport Department (under state govt.), PWD
etc.
What are the issues with Delhi HCBS
• No bus route rationalization was done on the first corridor. Buses can enter
and exit the corridor at any intersection.

• The bus flows, especially in the northern section, is well above 300buses/hr.
This means that the chances of buses getting stuck on the bus corridor are
very high. No rationalization exercise has been done to reduce the bus
numbers but increase overall capacity. Bus flows on pilot corridor are of the
order of 165-170 buses/hr with passenger flow of ~13500-14000 pphpd.
The system, as it is designed, cannot manage such numbers.

• HCBS bus stops are on the left side to allow access to all types of buses.
Passengers wanting to change routes would have to across the intersection
to change bus.

• Automatic Vehicle Tracking of majority of the buses using the corridor is not
done. A simplistic real time passenger information system is being tested
after system got operational.

• Ticketing is business as usual – Onboard; paper tickets directly given by a

conductor to passengers. There is no interchange possible since ticketing is
done directly by private operator with no central control except distance
based fare structure regulation. A few DTC buses have electronic paper
ticket dispensing machines.
 Existing mixed vehicle traffic is very high in
Delhi, mostly comprising cars.

Bus stops are at the intersection, with two parallel

platforms with 2/3 bays each. HCBS needs 18m at
the intersection reducing number of waiting lanes
available for mixed traffic to only 3 lanes.

This results in large queues being formed at

intersection. The intersections are chocked
during peak hour.
 Signal phasing in Delhi HCBS
MV MV MV
80 sec 60 sec 24 sec

Since buses can enter

and exit at any
intersection, this
necessitates a 6 phase
traffic signal system.
20 sec 20 sec 20 sec
BRT BRT BRT

Green time per BRT

phase is 8% while green
time for critical flow
direction of mixed traffic
is under 30%.
Delhi HCBS – Bus routes and corridor
• More than 60% of buses use less than 2 km of the corridor!

• Nearly 90% of buses have less than 5km of their route on the corridor. This
means that many buses would frequently enter and exit from the corridor.

Distance Travelled on Corridor

60.00
50.00
40.00
Percentage

30.00
20.00
10.00
0.00
< 1 Km

> 10 Km
1 to 2 Km

2 to 3 Km

3 to 4 Km

4 to 5 Km

5 to 6 Km

6 to 7 Km

7 to 8 Km

8 to 9 Km

9 to 10
Km
Distance

• Advantage to passengers is relatively marginal since their origin and destination

do not lie on the bus corridor. Many passengers have a relatively small part of
their trip on the corridor

• The number of special buses for BRT which would run only on the corridor is a
small percentage of the total buses running on the bus-way.
 Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Buses do not dock near the platform forcing passengers to board and
alight in unsafe manner
Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Even new buses cannot dock close

enough to the station
Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Bus lane is very narrow and buses end up hitting

bus stops and damaging infrastructure
 Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Poor bus maintenance and bus breakdown on corridor is high blocking the bus lanes
Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Long bus queues at

bus stops force
people to board and
alight anywhere
along the queue
Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Passengers unsure
of where their bus
will come keep
shuttling between
the two parallel bus
p l a t f o r m s
Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Ab sen ce of cro ssin g

facility as per desire line
of pedestrians (at the
rear of station) causes
people to access in
unsafe manner
Delhi HCBS – Issues of concern

Pedestrian signals should not mislead