Delhi bus routes reworked to cut ‘dead mileage’; commuters complain of poor frequency, longer wait time

There are a total of 606 bus routes. While DTC buses operate on 259 of these routes, cluster buses ply on 209 routes. On 138 routes, both DTC and cluster buses provide services.

Under the optimisation exercise, 51 bus routes on which DTC buses operated have been transferred to cluster buses and vice-versa. Since then, the department has been receiving complaints of reduction in frequency of buses; longer wait time; only cluster /DTC buses plying on a route; reduction in AC buses on many routes; and more crowds.

“A ‘dead kilometre’ is basically the distance between a depot and the first stop from where the bus picks up commuters and begins its journey. Be it a cluster or DTC bus, every bus departs from the depot in two shifts. But it was observed that there is a distance of about 3 to 5 km between bus depots and the first bus stand. On some routes, the ‘dead-kilometre’ distance would go up to 15 km. This accumulates to about 1,000 dead km. To reduce this, the department consulted transport experts such as WRI etc and optimised the dead kilometres,” said DTC officials.

Some of the bus routes facing issues include 623A, 473A, 770, 542, 271. On route 623A, the bus runs from Vasant Vihar depot to Anand Vihar depot and it has 70 stops. Earlier, both DTC and cluster buses would ply on this route. After optimisation, only cluster buses operate on this section.

There are 7,379 buses currently plying on Delhi roads, of which 4,060 come under DTC and 3,319 under DIMTS (cluster services).