There are multiple threads popping on BRTS here and elsewhere, thanks to the situation at Delhi and Pune. Here is one more, but focused only on gathering statstics required to support or counter the BRTS decisions. What would be realistic ridership targets for a BRTS at Bangalore, Pune or Delhi - basically, size of target market? What is the current profile of road space usage? What is the average commute distance in these cities (Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, Ahmedabad)?
Further, what is the current split of commuter traffic between various modes of transport? What are these cities' investment levels in existing modes of transport and how do thoe compare with investment BRTS will require? What percentage of road space would BRTS actually free? What are the average travel times on trunk commute routes, and how much will BRTS speeden up? How does the per capita road length in Bangalore or Pune compare with each other and peers in developing and developed world? Comparisons are welcome (Bogota, Curitiba, Lagos, Ottawa), but should be driven by statistics.
Basically, statistics, or stats based reasoning for or against BRTS is welcome.
[Picture of BRTS bus at Pune sourced from cncity_2007 @ flickr]
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Delhi - mode and distance
Parts from a letter to editor in Biz-Standard mailed by Sudhir Badami, who didn't mention a source/reference for these stats:
"In Delhi, 37% either walk or cycle, 18% use personal motorized transport, 40% buses, 3% paratransit, 2% use metro/rail transit. 40% travel less than 5 km to work, 35% b/w 5-10 km, and 25% more than 10 km".
BRTS policy centre website
Here is a link to the BRT Policy Center - this is a Washington based think-tank on BRT. Has loads of stuff on BRT all over the world - check the resource page. They have a database on BRT implementations all over the world.
http://www.gobrt.org
They also sponsor seminars in cities on BRTS.
Srivathsa
Drive safe. It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.
Delhi BRT design
found this doc on the net which is the design for the BRT in Delhi done by IIT. Pretty detailed..
http://web.iitd.ac.in/~tripp/urbantrpt/hcbs/hcbs/BRTdesignsum.pdf
One thing is evident from the figures that the roads are atleast 6 lanes where 2 lanes were taken for the BRT implimentation..with blr the question is where is our 6 lanes?
Good candidates are the ORR, Slikboard to EC, Hebbal to BIA for now!
Bangalore - Stats from CTTP-2007
Distribution of Trips by Purpose :
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Work - 18,39,819 (29.27%)
Education - 7,38,799 (11.75%)
Others - 6,49,737 (10.34%)
Non-home based - 92,347 (1.47%)
Employer Business - 11,747 (0.19%)
Return - 29,53,229 (46.98%)
Total - 62,85,678 (100 %)
Distribution of Trips by Mode of Travel :
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Public Transport - 26,34,471 (41.91%)
Car - 4,16,304 (6.62%)
2-Wheeler - 18,45,476 (29.36%)
IPT - 7,26,425 (11.56%)
Cycle - 1,39,407 (2.22%)
Walk - 5,23,597 (8.33%)
Total - 62,85,680 (100.00%)
Average Trip Lengths :
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Bus - 14.99 km
Car - 11.59 km
Two Wheeler - 8.02 km
Three Wheeler - 8.59 km
Cycle - 3.88 km
Walk - 1.01 km
Average for all Trip lengths-10.57 km
BRTS - Stats Unavailable ?
Stats available for Bangalore (& I suspect all Indian cities) are based on ridership levels in public transport, modal splits, vehicle usage, trip lengths, etc as per survey data compiled for Metro rail construction (Bangalore /Delhi) & as per CTTP reports for various cities.
I doubt if BRT specific data has been attempted - have'nt come across any for bangalore, though they might have done something in Delhi before finalising plans for corridors.
some stats but need to consider more
metro rail transportation survey says, >20k metro, >12k mono, >5k bus. (need to check the exact figures, but the scale is ok)
but i think it takes more than numbers
some stats on the scenes elsewhere
subway systems of the world on the same scale. (very interesting page)
i want to figure out what percentage of the total trips in these cities is by public transport. i think there is a level at which usage of public transport peaks off. when it stabilizes you cannot go beyond x% of the total trips. another thing is stops and coverage. union of all the area within a stop/ total area of the city. arough over estimate is 1km x 1km x no of stops/area of the city.
also some things to consider. (for what it is worth rehash of existing gyaan)
for PubT to be efficient coverage is important.
and for coverage geography is important. cities longer than they are wide easier to cover while round & rotund cities need more investment.
but identifying natural transit valleys and connecting them is prolly the way to go. connecting indiranagar to ec is perhaps more important than connecting indiranagar to peenya. but peenya needs to be connected to mysore road.
another is how close can you get me to where i want to go.
do all ends of the valley need a lot of door-to-door?
door-to-door within ec and mg road is easier to do, when compared to indiranagar and jayanagar.
for PubT to be efficient reliability is important.
only if the path on which the carrier travels is available to it reliably, can the carrier provide reliability to its users. reliability does not derive from the latent power or speed or the flashyness of the dabba.
for PubT to be efficient frequency is important.
a 100 bogie metro if it is avaiable only once in an hour is useless. at the same time how many volvos will it take to service jp nagar to kr puram on orr with decent frequency?
transit corridors are not water ways. as transit corridors mature, development around it increases, demand increases. the question then is can the corridor scale to accomodate this growth? so obviosuly at one stage all corridors will reach capacity. the question is how gracefully does the system fail at capacity?
good pubT irrespective of mode is expensive so is bad/no PubT.
'flow' diagrams in cttp
Pune Stats
Travel Modes – in Vehicle Km (2004-05)
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Two-wheelers – 55%
Car / Jeeps – 30%
Public Transport (Buses) – 6%
3-Wheelers – 8%
Taxi /Cabs – 1%
Total – 100%
Modes of Travel
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Walking – 37%
2-wheelers &Cars – 23%
Cycling – 18%
Public Transport (Bus) – 22%
Vehicles (By Nos.)
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3-Wheelers – 6%
2-Wheelers – 71%
4-Wheelers – 17%
Others – 6%
Source: Pune CDP 2006-12 (JNNURM)
3 lane wide road still suffering from Chaos - Go for BRT
BRTS at Jaipur
Watch PDCOR website for updates on Jaipurt BRT. See Tender notice for BRTS Jaipur. From their, costs for construction (phase II) are - 37 crore for 8.5 km section, 83 crore for 10.5 km section that includes an elevated (!) stretch.
Some points about Jaipur (source: Ind Express)
One thing I didn't understand in that article is:
"Motorists will be provided an alternative route. In Delhi, there is no such provision, so cars and bikes don't have an alternative but to take the bus corridor. "There is no inbuilt system of a different route and Delhi has also sealed all its right turns and U-turns, which leaves a motorist with few options," say Rajasthan officials"
What exactly does this mean? How do you provide a right turn via an alternate route? And without things like underpass and flyovers?
Some stats from Jaipur CDP (chapter 9 talks transport)
- Informal activities are substantially large involving migrant population to a large extent. Nearly 80% of these activities are being conducted along the road. The space occupied by them is eant for traffic and transportation purposes
- Average distance to be traveled by most people is around 8-10 km
- Travel to work distance characteristics
- <1 km - 15.6%
- 1-3 km - 13.5%
- 4-6 km - 20.3%
- 7-9 km - 23.5%
- 10-25 km - 21.3%
- >25 km - 5.8%
- Though public transport comprised only 6.32% of the total number of vehicles, nearly 26% of passengers use it for travel.
Lots to read in docs at PDCOR website.Some road length stats from
Some road length stats from 2005 (source: rediff/PTI article)
"Kolkata ... city has a density of 814.80 vehicles, the highest among per km road length as compared to 766.31 for Mumbai, followed by 616.58 Chennai and 170 Delhi.
But in terms of vehicle population Delhi topped the list of metros with 44 lakh, followed by 16.44 lakh in Chennai, 14 lakh in Mumbai and 11.44 lakh in Kolkata.
On the other hand, Kolkata has the minimum road length among all the metros with 1,404 km, followed by 1,800 km in Chennai, 1,900 km in Mumbai and 25,948 km in Delhi."
Looking around for updates stats (3 years is a long time), and for Bangalore as well, as well as the basis for these road length numbers - Delhi numbers look a bit too high, may be a typo in the article?
Vehicle /Road Stats - Scarce Info
SB - Bangalore is reported to be 2nd highest after Delhi & the number is said to be nearly 29 lakh vehicles. I dont think there are any comparable stats, but these were expressions quoted from an interview with BBMP officilas in the media sometime back (more current), to build up the case & justify construction of elevated roads.
Rather than road lengths, total road area would be a better, more comparable figure as Delhi has several 6, 8 & even 10-lane roads, & road length comparisons will be skewed when compared with cities like bangalore, where there are few 6-lane roads.
Alternately, road lengths would be better as expressed in terms of single lanes. (If a road has two lanes, the length would have to be multiplied by 2, if 4 lanes, then by 4 & so on). It would then be more comparable.
This factor may have already been accounted for considering Delhi's stat for total road lengths.
Stats re. this & related info is very scarce, if any.
A critique of Ahmedabad's BRT System
A Sustainable Urban Transport Panacea?
The JnNURM and the National Urban Transport Policy have given a boost to bus rapid transit systems in many Indian cities and Ahmedabad's Janmarg is the largest such network now in operation. This paper shows that while catering to latent transport demand, Janmarg has not promoted inclusivity or encouraged a shift away from private motorised transport. It has also given short shrift to non-motorised transport systems, which are important for inclusivity and for reducing the city's carbon footprint. The study raises the pertinent question of whether public transport ought to be viewed as a technological fix or as part of a wider solution of urban or social issues.
The authors, Darshini Mahadevia (darshini@cept.ac.in) and Rutul Joshi (joshirutul@cept.ac.in) are with the Faculty of Planning, and members of the Centre for Urban Equity, CEPT University, Ahmedabad; Abhijit Datey (adatey@gmail.com) is a Research Associate at CUE.
This research was part of a project titled “Promoting Low-Carbon Transport in India” and is from a larger report titled “Sustainability and Social Accessibility of Bus Rapid Transit in India”. The project was managed by the United Nations Environment Programme and UNEP Riso Centre and funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Germany.
The paper expresses the authors’ views and not of their institution.
For the full report, click here
The study was undertaken in 2011 when 44.5 km of the total planned 88.8 km was in operation.
Something that readily interested me:
The branding of Janmarg has created a schism between the two bus services, the AMTS and the BRTS, both owned and operated by the same entity, the AMC. While the BRTS was being associated with new, swanky services, the AMTS services became more irregular, faced financial problems and slowed down due to the increasing mixed traffic on roads narrowed by the BRTS.
Well, there's lots more. May be Prajagalu would like to comment.