BRT - Bus Rapid Transit - II

Acknowledgements first! :)

The questions were sent by:
Amarendra Godbole, Gopal Phadke, Jhumkee Iyengar, Mahesh Ambi,
Neeta Garud, Prateek Kaul, Shambhavi Borkar, Ujjwal Joshi.

Many thanks!
We have grouped the questions in 9 categories. We cover category (0 and) 1 today.

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0. Main objectives of BRT: (Do read the Prologue)
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Create a "metro on tyres" on the roads to increase throughput (no of persons carried per hour by the entire transportation infrastructure), to keep pace with growing needs while providing an alternative to discourage personal transport in order to prevent congesting the roads and reduce pollution. Provide footpath/cycle tracks in the road design to sustain/ encourage non-motorized transport. All in all, provide cost effective, sustainable transportation to all sections of society.

1.a. GP: How is it different from good old PMT?

1.b. MA: What are the advantages of BRT over the present PMT bus system?

BRT is not a replacement for PMT. PMT is not a scalable service, since it cannot reach higher throughput as the traffic needs grow. A faster & different type of service is needed to achieve high throughput. Such a service will naturally need dedicated lanes. A different infrastructure & modern systems (e.g. computer controlled signals, ticketing) are essential tools to achieve the desired throughput. All of this can be achieved in under/ over ground systems like metro/ sky-bus, however, they cost several times higher compared to BRT.

PMT will continue to exist, both for non-BRT roads as well as for serving as a feeder to BRT. BRT is essentially designed for bulk of your daily commute on arterial roads. You would typically use a PMT/ rickshaw/ walk at either ends of your daily commute. Even then, it is estimated that your overall commute time (and hassle) will reduce.

PMT and BRT serve slightly different needs as explained above, hence both have advantages over each other depending on the target user. Needless to say, one cannot have a successful transportation for the city without a much-improved PMT supporting the BRT.

As per PMC's plans, BRT will be run under the same administration as PMT or later by the proposed PMT-PCMT corp.