HCBS model has serious flaws

HCBS model has serious flaws
Muralidhar Rao


Curitiba in Brazil supposedly pioneered this model, following which quite a few other cities wo rl dw i d e adopted it. In India, a team of technocrats from IIT, Delhi have been advocating this model from long, and as a result, New Delhi has just launched one route on these lines, with a few more to follow. The Delhi experiment has been receiving a lot of flak in the media, which though the supporters of the model would like to label as the propaganda by Metro/Mono rail lobbies.
Allowing for 20+20 ft for dedicated lanes on either side of a 10-foot wide median to accommodate the access structures, it will leave only 50 ft for everything else on a 100-foot (between outer edges of drains on either side) road, like the one in Indiranagar. Now, if you provide for 20-foot lanes on either side for general traffic, which in itself is going to be crammed, you get a balance of 5 ft on either edges for drains, footpaths, and utility lines, etc. This will be the end of the majestic trees along this road.
The question is: How many roads do you have of this width in Bangalore?
Supposing in any given route direction, BMTC is operating at a frequency of a bus every 3 minutes, and the buses are moving at an average speed of 10 kmph, there will be a gap of 500 metre between any two buses. If a lane is dedicated exclusively for buses, it will then push out 100 other vehicles from this 500-metre stretch (making for 200 vehicles per km), assuming an average vehicle length of 5 metre, and near bumper-tobumper traffic conditions.
This is total under-utilisation of high-demand city road space. If the cost of this much land is factored into project costing, particularly in cities like Bangalore, then the differential between the Metro Rail and HCBS will narrow considerably.
Rather than dedicated lanes, total ban on private vehicles (vehicles other than buses, taxis and autos) on select stretches during peak hours would be preferable.
In Bangalore, the BMLTA has been instituted. There is a proposal to strengthen and broadbase it. Once it’s in place, hopefully Bangalore will open out the sector even to players like Tata, TVS, with more freedom rather than pursuing the BRT model.
(The writer is co-chairman
of BMTC’s Commuter
Comfort Task Force)