Indian Government Signals Growing Support for BRT

Posted: 01 Apr 2006

Related to: BRT in India, Developing High-Quality, Low-Cost Mass Transit, India
Contributed by: Nalin Sinha, ITDP India

As plans are made to build systems that can feasibly address the growing mobility needs of India’s major cities, officials are reconsidering a longstanding preference for metro rail.

On March 21, more than 400 mayors, municipal commissioners, town planners, engineers, transport corporations, financial institutions, bus manufacturers, researchers and policy-makers from across India gathered in Delhi for the Ministry of Urban Development’s Conference and Exhibition on Alternative Technologies for Public Transport.  The aim of the conference was to introduce key decision-makers to a balanced range of approaches to public transport and enable India’s cities to make more well-informed choices about addressing their mobility needs.

Going in, many participants viewed the gathering as a pivotal opportunity to correct the strong historical bias that many Indian cities have had toward building metro rail systems, despite the heavy government subsidies typically required to sustain them.

“High-cost Metro is not the answer to the future of cities whose population is expected to double in the next 25 years,” admitted Mr. S. Jaipal Reddy, India’s Minister of Urban Development, in his inaugural address.

In addition to presentations about metro, monorail, light rail transit and sky bus options, presentations were made by many international experts on the bus rapid transit (BRT) systems implemented in Bogotá, Curitiba, Jakarta, Seoul, and Taipei, as well as the India-based BRT systems proposed in Ahmedabad and Delhi.

Delivering the concluding speech at the event, Urban Development Secretary Mr. Anil Baijal said, “The BRT presentations were really very educative in that they have broken the myths that BRT requires very wide right-of-ways and roads, that BRT takes away road space from mixed traffic, and that BRT can not take more than 10,000 passengers per hour per direction.”

“In fact, the BRT experience of Bogotá and other cities demonstrates that the system is capable of transporting more than 40,000 passengers per hour per direction, equivalent to any Metro rail,” he added.  Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai are currently planning Metro systems.

Mr. Baijal announced that under the Jawahar Lal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, national support will be offered to states for adopting appropriate public transport systems that are non-polluting and people-friendly. The government has approved the plan of spending INR 50,000 crores (over US$ 11 billion) over a period of seven years for urban and transportation programmes in various Indian cities. For the 2006-07 annual budget, the Government of India has allocated Rs. 5,000 crores (over US$1 billion). In addition, the Urban Development Ministry has taken a decision to encourage private-public participation for the development of infrastructure in different states and cities though build-operate-transfer projects.

The plan calls for 60% of the cost to be borne by private players, 20% by the Mission and the remaining 20% by the respective states.  States seeking central funds for road infrastructure projects will also have to include adequate pedestrian space and dedicated bicycle tracks in their plans.  The Ministry of Urban Development seeks to ensure that no city is granted approval for a Metro rail system without first conducting serious feasibility studies.

Between May and July of this year, the Indian government plans to conduct workshops to disseminate information about alternative technologies for public transport (including Bus Rapid Transit) among key decision-makers in nine cities – Bhubaneshwar, Hyderabad, Raipur, Trivandrum, Pune, Guwahati, Lucknow, Jaipur, and Chandigarh.