Rejects Claim That It Serves Large Number Of Bus Users New Delhi: The Delhi government’s argument for continuing with the bus rapid transit corridor — that it serves a large number of commuters travelling by bus — has been shot down by the report compiled by the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI). It says lack of a proper bus route rationalization has meant that buses cluster on the BRT stretch, with only four-five passengers boarding or alighting per bus, but the government data shows a huge number of passengers plying on the stretch. This, the report notes, “is obviously boosting the passengers per hour per direction (PPHPD) drastically and thus presenting an exaggerated figure”. That’s not the only thing wrong with the corridor. The CRRI report also rubbishes claims that BRT has reduced the number of fatal and serious injury or crashes on the stretch. CRRI, which has accessed police records to compare the after and before BRT scenarios, says, “A comparison of the available road crash data indicates that there is an increase of 40% in the number of fatal road crashes coupled with 48% increase in the number of fatalities. At the same time, the number of simple/injurious road crashes reported by the traffic police has registered an increase of 7%.” Delhi’s BRT experiment also comes out unfavorably when compared to Ahmedabad’s BRT corridor. The study notes that while the travel time of cars on the motor vehicle lane on both BRT corridors is almost the same during morning hours, during evening hours, very high travel time has been observed on the Delhi BRT. “This is to a large extent due to the insufficient road width available on the MV lane (7-8m) as against the 10m width available for each direction of travel before BRT in April 2008,” says the report. The report is scathing about the Delhi BRT, saying that while “the bus composition is about 3% of total traffic in both the case, the observed average speed of buses on Ahmedabad BRT section varies between 22 to 25kmph (CEPT Ahmedabad), which is much higher than that of Delhi BRT (13-15kmph).” That the Delhi BRT has few regards for the pedestrian is also pointed out, with CRRI calling more measures for pedestrians “essential”. On foot overbridges, the peak hour pedestrian volume was found to be from 250-500, with the highest volume at the Pushpa Bhawan FOB. The amount of fuel consumed on the stretch has also been calculated by the CRRI study. It found that the idling at intersections led to losses of 78-139ml in the case of petrol cars while in the case of diesel, it was between 72-217ml across different time periods of the day. The amount of fuel lost ranged between 2% and 45%, says the report, with the maximum quantum wastage being recorded on the stretch between Sheikh Sarai to Chirag Dilli, varying in the range of 17%- 41% during the day. The time lost in idling was from 37%-60%. The man hours lost in BRT is also significant, as the study found. “The evaluation of passenger hours in terms of moentary values shows that there is a loss of Rs 87.91 crore in a year during normal BRT operation compared to experimental run,” says the report. The total number of vehicle hours savings during the experimental run was around 8,183 hours on a weekday and 4,366 hours on the weekend for the 16-hour study duration, says the report. rumu.banerjee@timesgroup.com WAYS TO END BOTTLENECK CRRI report is based on various studies and a trial run that went on from May 12 to 19 It looks at three possible scenarios based on traffic calculations for 2015: with BRT; without it; and with a link road between Press Enclave Marg and Outer Ring Road Scenarios based on traffic projects factoring in 5-7% increase in traffic per annum Other recommendations include bringing down signal phases in traffic cycle It urges for stringent enforcement to arrest rampant parking violations Transport department should explore the possibility of capacity augmentation on motor vehicle lane on either side, starting from Sheikh Sarai-Chirag Dilli-Siri Fort, to relieve the oversaturated stretch