Travel to new airport in first dedicated bus lane

Travel to new airport in first dedicated bus lane
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bangalore: Travel from Hebbal flyover to Devanahalli airport in less than half-an-hour. No, you won’t be travelling on the expressway or high-speed rail link. But soon, the BMTC’s Volvo buses will use a dedicated bus lane to let passengers reach the airport in a jiffy.
Bangalore’s first dedicated bus lane will be laid to exclusively ferry airport passengers and the BMTC is deploying 40 A/C buses for this purpose.
Lane marking will begin in January and trial runs will begin towards January-end and February. The plan is to ready the lane before the airport is inaugurated in March. The BMTC and transport department received the go-ahead to execute the project following the submission of a comprehensive report on the lane system by traffic expert M N Sreehari.
The dedicated bus lane is meant to ensure quick travel time on brand-new low-fare Volvos and also to avoid breakdowns.
“The world over, Volvos driving in bus lanes have a 0.001% breakdown rate and this will be the case here too. We have also recommended that new BMTC buses be used for the low-fare sector,’’ Sreehari told The Times of India.
The plan is to cover the distance between Hebbal flyover and airport in 25 minutes. Initially, there were no provisions to install bus stops along the way, but owing to good passenger flow, bus stops have been tentatively planned for every 2 km. The distance between bus stops will be worked out later.
Sreehari has suggested that the Hebbal BMTC depot can double up as the departure hub. Passengers coming in from the Outer Ring Road, Vijaynagar and Koramangala must go to the Hebbal depot to board buses.
Passengers from Bangalore East and South-East can proceed to the airport without a detour as a direct road is being built.
The bus lane will be marked by two yellow lines using thermoplastic paint, and the lane will be marked: ‘For Buses Only’. The police will man the lane for a while to ensure only buses drive on it. Barriers will also be put up at regular points along the lane.