[sustran] Some sense prevails in case of Delhi BRT

[Alok Jain]

POSER FOR GOVT 
Can BRT stay with changes,asks HC 

TIMESNEWSNETWORK 

New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Monday asked the Delhi government to respond by Tuesday if the Ambedkar Nagar-Moolchand bus rapid transit corridor could be continued with some changes.
The new bench hearing the case identified problem areas with the controversial corridor and asked the government if it can make changes on it.Observing that the BRT concept and design is not bad,a division bench of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Manmohan Singh said,Let us find a mechanism to remove the problem to save BRT. 
While examining the Central Road Research Institutes (CRRI) survey report criticizing the corridor,the bench said,There is no defect in design but sudden surge of traffic in the middle of the stretch brings a bad name to the entire project. 
During the hearing,a senior CRRI official,who headed the team that prepared the report,explained to the bench about the procedure the expert body had adopted while conducting the trial run on BRT.After perusing the road map and the data submitted by the road research institute,the bench heard the final argument for more than four hours and said the problem lies with the stretch from Sheikh Sarai to Chirag Dilli,which is only 900m out of the total 5.8km operational stretch.
The bench said a heavy traffic comes from the Saket side joining the corridor at Sheikh Sarai,and from the Chirag Dilli point,the cars and buses divert to different routes.The court asked the government to find if the buses of route Nos 534 (Anand Vihar-Mehrauli ) and 534A (Anand Vihar-IGI airport ) and some chartered buses could be re-routed to decongest the corridor.Agreeing to the CCRI suggestion that rerouting some buses could solve the problem,HC asked the transport department to convene a meeting and inform it about the outcome by Tuesday.
The bench,however,dismissed another suggestion that the bus lanes and stops,which are in the middle of the corridor,can be shifted 100m away.If BRT has to remain,bus lanes can not be shifted as it will create chaos. it said,asking the government to explore possibility if slip roads could be made to divert the traffic from the Saket side.The court will hear the case again on Tuesday.