Ideas for a New Delhi. Bus karo! Any city anywhere in the world worth being called a metropolis has a solid bus transport system as the basis of its transportation grid. The Congress in the last fifteen years has not been able to either strengthen or restructure or redesign the bus transport system in Delhi. In stead of investing in this, the CM of Delhi took an easy ride on a blue print of the Metro laid down by the BJP in 1998 and has still not got down from that trip. Be that as it may, the point is this: big ticket transportation ideas like the Metro slowly become redundant if last mile connectivity becomes a bottleneck. Fact is, the CM has allowed the DTC to run into terminal losses; and built a parallel corrupt regime based on privately owned licensing that resulted in deadly killing machines called the Bluelines; removed them after a court order and civil unrest and replaced them with another non starter scheme of low floor buses that are struggling to break even. This is apart from fiddling in the mean time with foolish ideas like the BRT corridors, which had to be aborted midway. The Metro is already beginning to choke and the throughput –or the number of people travelling through it is increasing every day. The problems have begun. Metro stations will become ghettos like railway stations and bus-addas have become and will resemble the old city of Chandni Chowk, choked with a host of autos, cycle rickshaws, feeder buses, scooter and motorcycle stands and car parks apart from a thousand odd people alighting and catching taxis, private cars and full bodied buses. Underpasses near every metro station are already turning into hovels - all because there is no sensible dispersion of traffic after alighting, and an over reliance on the Metro. In short, this Congress regime has watched a brilliant idea go to seed because it refused to plan ahead, think sensibly or even bother to figure what the city needs. Here is the simple thing to do; invest in a sturdy and extensive bus fleet that connects streets to main roads, main roads to key stations, stations to business districts and close the loop. Now just make it a clean, safe and timely operation. Decent drivers; automated ticketing, GPS tagged, in-camera operation; traffic and time coordination, bus shelters that shelter, information assistance. No man wants to be late to office. No woman wants to be molested in a bus. No senior citizen or disabled will use it if it is not user friendly. You want to make this city world class? Start here.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 06:58:35 +0000
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