[sustran] Does a city need the BRT?

Vinay Baindur yanivbin at gmail.com
Thu Apr 2 20:01:08 JST 2009


http://www.livemint.com/2009/04/01212823/Does-a-city-need-the-BRT.html?h=C
Does a city need the BRT?
This is the third in an eight-part series on life in our cities. It will
appear every alternate Thursday
Gautam Bhatia
Asiad Village is one of New Delhi’s more upmarket addresses. It’s near where
I live, and on many mornings I have seen a car racing along the main road, a
man engrossed in a newspaper on the back seat. As it nears a municipal dump
(where in any case the garbage is more often than not dumped outside rather
than in), the driver tosses a bag of garbage on the road, without even
slowing. The plastic rips and spreads the pile of vegetable peels, chicken
bones and eggshells on the street. The car races on.[image: Locking horns:
The Chirag Dilli stretch of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor, which has
earned the wrath of many and given rise to heated debate over the
desirability of such a system. Madhu Kapparath / Mint]Locking horns: The
Chirag Dilli stretch of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor, which has
earned the wrath of many and given rise to heated debate over the
desirability of such a system. Madhu Kapparath / Mint
To say that the Indian middle class is pampered and spoilt is to make a
statement of little value. Throughout the world, it is no secret that the
middle class determines the quality of urban life. Its ability to buy or
rent space, its capacity for consumption, its requirements for offices,
schools, parks, recreation, shopping, and indeed, its needs for
transportation, all set the tone for the city. Yet there is little in the
actions of the Indian middle class that shows concern for citizens that
don’t belong to it. It uses the city on its own terms, with a selfish
emphasis on convenience, requiring unencumbered access to shopping,
insisting on alighting and parking only at doorsteps, waging continual
territorial wars over private space, and usurping all that belongs in the
public realm. It grabs sidewalks, seizes airspace, cantilevers illegally and
reclaims all that belongs to others for its own purposes. However minuscule
a minority, the middle class has the power to hold the city to ransom. And
it does.
*Also Read *City Centre’s earlier
articles<http://www.livemint.com/articles/keywords.aspx?kw=City%20centre>
The Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT, system has faced the direct ire of Delhi’s
middle class. Connecting the city’s posh southern colonies to the working
district around Connaught Place, the experiment cut room for itself on the
centre of one of the busiest arteries, leaving little space for private
vehicles. Unused to the mismatch of road space between the private car and
the public bus, many have raised their voices at the most potent venue for
debate: the cocktail party. In upper class drawing rooms, voices are raised
in uniform condemnation of the new mode of public transport: “I spent 2
hours in traffic”; “I was stuck at the light for 45 minutes, *yaar*, this
BRT just doesn’t work. Why don’t they scrap it?” The same people who will
spend hours labouring on New York City sidewalks without a squeak, or
carrying heavy packages in and out of the London Underground without so much
as a groan, will mount a scathing offensive if made to walk on Mumbai’s
Cuffe Parade or Bangalore’s Brigade Road. Without a driver waiting with an
open car door at the kerb, no trip in the city is possible.
Their sharp refrain carries none of the concerns for the larger benefit of
any urban idea, which is condemned simply for private inconvenience and the
fear of lost status. Why should a bank clerk get to work on time while I, in
my Toyota, am delayed at his expense? Transport, like everything else in the
city, needs to share the burdens of the class divide.
Is the supposed failure of any public project always to be measured from a
singular perspective? Is it possible for the few car owners who are
inconvenienced to see that the BRT has been greatly beneficial to the
multitudes of bus passengers commuting to office every day? For every one of
those car owners, seven bus commuters get to work in relative comfort and
efficiency. But when less than 20% of all movement in the city is by private
transport, is the silent majority—travelling by bus, cycling, or
walking—ever going to be heard? Unlikely.
The idea of the BRT was adapted for implementation in Delhi by the Indian
Institute of Technology, and it is indeed a shame that the project had none
of the public support that a new initiative deserves. Of course, there is a
reason why the BRT has been successful in Bogota, Colombia, and Jakarta,
Indonesia, and not in New Delhi. The original model was planned as a
complete system that considered people’s passage through pedestrian paths,
tunnel links and bridge access. The system not only worked as an efficient
organism but also created the necessary moments of pause— sit-outs,
self-contained flower gardens, kiosks, etc—that made movement in the city
worth the experience.
The BRT’s success or failure is linked intrinsically to our ability to
reproduce second-rate clones of foreign ideas. Without underpasses, speed
control, or incentives for car owners to use the alternative, the New Delhi
attempt was half-hearted and incomplete. It took only the picture of a cow
squatting happily in one of the lanes to give an indication of the local
conditions within which the foreign copy was set.
In its search for ways to accommodate the increasing number of commuters in
a growing city, the government needs to seriously rethink transportation
possibilities, away from the conventions in other countries—perhaps a
radical shift in practice to schemes that allow people to abandon private
cars altogether: to develop traffic master plans for a range of metro,
A-grade and B-grade cities that effectively integrate all forms of public
transport into a comprehensive map. The idea is to come up with individual
and imaginative alternatives to private transport which has, as a failed
model, thus far consumed almost a third of city space— space that could well
be used for parks and recreation. Transport planners know very well that it
is possible to link all points in the city through BRTs, metros,
three-wheelers, cycle rickshaws and pedestrian sidewalks. With a road system
free of private cars, the city will not just breathe easier, but will once
again become a place for all its citizens.
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