Latin American model for Bangalore’s traffic woes

Latin American model for Bangalore’s traffic woes
Deccan Herald

What are the favourite subjects for discussion among Bangaloreans? The money power of IT professionals and roads choked with vehicles, right? What if you are in London?


What are the favourite subjects for discussion among Bangaloreans? The money power of IT professionals and roads choked with vehicles, right? What if you are in London? You will be admiring the efficient underground tube system. But if you are in Bogota, the capital of Colombia and Curitiba, one of the ten busiest cities of Brazil, you will be admiring as well as envying the Bus Rapid Tansit system (BRT).

It is the efficient bus transport which has given a new identity to these two cities in South America. This writer, who was in Bogota and Curitiba recently on an invitation by Volvo India, had an opportunity to use the BRT and also study the system.

The credit of giving the novel BRT to the world goes to former Mayor Jaime Lerner of Curitiba. A variant of BRT was developed by former Mayor Enrique Penelosa in Bogota. Lerner also developed an urban governance model which has become model to even the US cities.

The moment I entered central Bogota, the sight of sleek articulate and bi-articulate buses moving smoothly impressed me. The city has too many vehicles on the roads just like in Bangalore.

Still, the buses move without hassles because they run on dedicated lanes. Each road usually has six lanes and of this two lanes meant only for buses. Unlike in Bangalore, the roads have neither humps nor potholes. The footpaths are wide and pedestrians use skywalks with ramps to cross roads. Medians, cycle paths and gardens along the roads are other notable features.

In a thickly populated city like Bogota, where infrastructure improvement stretches the already tight budget, the BRT has proved to be a boon. The BRT here bears the formal name of ‘IRT and Transmilenio’. Enrique Penalosa visualised the BRT in 1998 and implemented it in under four years, drawing inspiration from Curitiba which developed the BRT in the 1970s.

Convenient & safe

The BRT is something like the London tube system in terms of convenience but safer as the buses run on the surface. Having travelled in tube trains in London and Singapore, I can vouch for the advantages of BRT over the tube.

Buy a smart card (costs about Rs 17) at any bus station, and you can hop on and hop off the buses any number of times. The low boarding platform helps even wheel-chair-bound people to travel by buses. Signboards at bus stations display maps indicating the bus routes and schedules. The waiting period for any bus does not exceed two minutes. Bi-articulated Volvo buses can carry up to 300 passengers.

Not all stations are spacious and the BRT does not cover the entire city. Under Phase I, BRT covers 42 km of turn corridors and its seven feeder routes cover 215 km. Work on the Phase II is underway. The government has created the infrastructure required but offers no subsidy for the BRT. Unlike metro railways in many advanced cities, the BRT here is not incurring losses. The fares are revised every fortnight.

Why did Enrique Penalosa develop the BRT when major cities in the West favour metro trains? His answer is terse, “Why should we live like rats? Why build a transport network below the ground when we have spent huge sums to develop roads? The BRT costs just one hundredth of the metro train system.”

Before Penalosa visualised the BRT, there were thousands of bus operators in the city.

No to metro rail

Connexion Movil, which is operating buses for the BRT, is run on a co-operative basis by a group of private bus operators and there are 6,000 share holders. While the light rail systems cost between US$ 10-50 million a km, the metro railway cost not les than US$ 40 to 200 million.

In contrast, Transmilenio has cost just $5 million a km. The BRT can be developed within months while the other two systems take years to materialise.

Another question is, why run a fleet of buses when one train can transport commuters in large numbers at a time? Statistics again provide the answer. Transmilenio handles 48,000 passengers per hour at peak hour in one direction while metro trains carry up to 40,000! This is reason enough for Bogota not to go in for metro railway.

Restrictions

Bogota has imposed restrictions on the use of cars, to decongest the roads. As BRT serves as a dependable alternative, over 70 per cent of the city’s 70 lakh people use buses today. As a spin-off benefit, both accident rate and pollution level have dropped. Good roads and BRT bus links have sent land value up and benefited business.

Curitiba, the capital of the city of Paran province, revers its former mayor and architect Jaime Lerner as the father not only of the BRT but also of urban governance. He rebuilt the city system in the 1970s around the mass bus transport, with the help of Volvo. Nearly 31 per cent of the buses (684 of the 2,244 buses) and all bi-articulated buses are from Volvo. Smart tubular glass bus-stations dot the city.

Victor H Castillo, Volvo’s BRT telematics specialist, says the concept of higher passenger capacity is ideal for a growing city. He says his company is not interested only in selling buses but is keen on finding traffic solutions to cities.

Per Gabell, President, Volvo Bus Latin America, says his company wants to be pro-active and hence wants to work with governments to solve traffic problems. “We are not selling only buses but solutions. Every city is different and every city can overcome its problems,” he contends.

Curitiba, with its population of 17 lakh, has the second largest number of car per capita in Brazil — one car for every three inhabitants. But it has lowest use of auto fuel per capita among the Brazilian cities, thanks to the integrated BRT which transports 23,000 passengers per hour.

Lerner did not focus attention only on the BRT. He imposed a ban on the construction of high-rise buildings, closed some roads for cars, made people grow fruit-bearing trees all over the city, developed parks and paid street children to nurture it.

Recycling waste

Earlier the city had five sq ft of parkland per citizen and now it has 550 sq ft. River Iguazu was diverted seven km through artificial channels before allowing it to enter the city to prevent polluted water from flowing into parks.

This city has become a model for the world in terms of recycling waste. About 70 per cent of trash is recycled or composted.

Today, the city is an ideal example for urban growth to the entire world. Lerner is urban consultant to many cities. His philosophy is simple. Make maximum use of the roads and public places for the good of all by investing the least. He improved street transport because it is the cheapest available.

Over the years, 60 km of dedicated lanes, 300 km of feeder lines, 185 km of integrated district bus lines and 250 km of expressway have been developed. The city now needs no subway, according to Lerner.

A mass leader

Undoubtedly, the 64-year-old Lerner is a mass leader and he is loved so much that as Mayor in January 1993, polls gave him unprecedented approval of 97 per cent. With the economy booming in this city, the population growth has been 164 per cent in the last 25 years. Lerner says he is not against cars but cars should not dictate a city’s growth or our lives.

While bidding goodbye to Curitiba, I was wishing wistfully that Bangalore’s city planners would learn a lesson or two from Lerner, and from Penelosa too.