Bus Rapid Transit: A Tale of Three Cities

1. Off-board Fare Collection System: Since BRT is often confused with buses on dedicated lanes, they end up getting facilities that are usually provided for ordinary buses. This includes buying a ticket from the conductor instead of scanning ones card at a turnstile like the ones used for rail bases systems.

Delhi didn’t provide any off-board fare collection systems but Ahmedabad did. Off-board fare collection system save considerable amount of time and just makes the entire journey more reliable and convenient. It is strange that Delhi already had a similar mechanism in place for the Metro but it didn’t extend it for the BRT. It wouldn’t have been difficult for the BRT and Metro fare system to be integrated with a common prepaid card.

2. Intersection Treatments: Intersections are the bottlenecks along all arterials. It is at the intersection that all delays are incurred and hence require special attention in design and operations. With BRT thrown in the mix, signalized intersections especially must be designed to provide priority to BRT buses without causing undue delays for general traffic.

While Delhi and Ahmedabad both installed signal priority measures at intersections, the former made an engineering error – it chose extremely long signal cycles (the total time it takes for a signal to serve all movements). Long signal cycles tend to build up traffic similar to how a landslide which first blocks a river and then gives way leading to flooding. Indian cities are notorious for operating their signals with outrageously long cycle lengths.

3. Service Planning: Delhi BRT also suffered from inefficient service frequencies resulting in long wait times during both the peak and off-peak hours.

5. Station Design: Delhi’s BRT stations also scored poorly on account of neglecting safety and comfort, factors that have significant impact on choice riders. Commuters are known to overestimate their wait times at bus stops by as much as four to five times.

A station’s design can often mitigate this inherent limitation associated with mass transit. It is therefore important to build and brand BRT stations differently from those meant for regular city buses. By all accounts, Delhi BRT’s stations were never designed to attract the choice rider, the white collar employee of an MNC.

6. Quality of Service: Finally, Delhi BRT also fared poorly on factors that have the biggest influence on choice riders. These include unsafe access to BRT stations and overcrowded buses, factors which dissuade most white-collar commuters from relying on public transport.

So, what Delhi BRT did was just improve the service for existing riders and some new ones without attracting choice riders who continued to drive their cars, albeit on narrower roads.