Now, this leaves me totally confused. Commenting on the B.R.T fiasco (minions wait, we intend to explain our previous post in greater detail after the damned exams are over) Delhi’s honorable chief minister, Sheila Dixit says,
Dikshit said while the feedback was that the corridor, that aims at segregating different kinds of vehicles into separate lanes, was satisfactory, buses, pedestrians and cyclists, motorists were facing problems.
Huh! If buses, pedestrians, cyclists and motorists are facing problems, then whom is B.R.T satisfactory for? Cows?
Filed under: Just Plain Weird
R
{Madame told one of the BRT’s ‘conceptual’ authors, IIT Delhi don Geetam Tiwari that she wanted solutions to the problems that had surfaced…..}
Do not mumble a word about RUMINATING COWS – the dedicated, self employed, naturally placed non-human traffic system…..when u take a look at them, you get a splash of serenity, a welcoming break from a world of chaos.
Segregation by vehicle type or travel mode is expected to improve traffic conditions as it allows flow of homogeneity. But if A universe of homogeneity is much larger than B universe of homogeneity, in a city, then nimble-footed, flexible minded Indians do not even bat an eyelid to trickle onto the available territory.
Most Indians have their lanes formatted in their minds, they dont exist in front of their eyes.
I feel EVERONE SHOULD FLY, Everyone should feel the wind on his/her shoulder, Everyone should focus on developing wings….
n in the meantime, Madame n her team should FLY to Curitiba, Brazil, home to one of the most successful BRT systems in the world, the Trans Millenio in the Colombian capital Bogota, which claims to carry 40,000 passengers per hour per direction…to study the roads closely.
Confused,
BRT sucks bigtime… it has created more problems than it has solved.. you really have to see the BRT in Pune to believe it… good 4 lane roads are becoming 2 lane roads for other vehicles (2 lanes on each side of the road reserved for BRT buses). Worse, trucks and ST buses are not allowed on that lanes, so all traffic other than local buses travels on one lane on one side !!
BRT may be a good idea for speeding up public transport but it needs really wide roads to implement it…
Atleast the Delhi administration is waking up to the faults of BRT.. in Pune, the corrupt politicos are earning crores out of it, so public protests are ignored !!
Now, Now.
TOI and HT may be going gaga over the issue, but it remains an immensely workable idea.
First, a separate space for cyclists and pedestrians is good, because many many Indians have no choice but to cycle or walk, and they need safe spaces for that.
Second, prioritising shared modes of transport is also good, because it reduces the social cost incurred. A car occupies more space to transport one person when compared to the space a bus occupies per capita.
This much is commonly agreed upon. Yes, there are lot of people for whom traveling in personal vehicles is a status symbols. But the question is not how to placate them, but how to make them pay for having such absurd hang-ups -hang-ups that have an immense social cost.
There is also the question of how to identify modes of transport that don’t have high social costs. What about trucks that carry freight? And personal vans or buses carrying a large number of people?
These problems need to be ironed out. But I can hardly see what is wrong with BRT as a concept.