This Bogota model will soon make Delhi breathe easy

In the queue after Delhi—it is initially implementing BRT over a 5-km stretch in Ambedkar Nagar—are Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad, which is all set to finalise a more elaborate network.

And, helping India on this novel route is the man widely regarded as the ‘‘brand ambassador’’ of BRT across the world: Enrique Penalosa, former Mayor of Colombia’s capital Bogota, who used BRT to change the face of his city.

‘‘The officials I met here seemed very keen on BRT. In Mumbai, they want me to go back and talk to them again,’’ says Penalosa, who was in Agra for the Better Air Quality workshop last week.

Says Walter Hook, from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy: ‘‘It’s about time integrated solutions are found for pollution problems. Just clean fuels and vehicles are not going to do the trick.’’

In the Delhi context, this means that unless a comprehensive solution is found, the gains made from switching to CNG will simply get neutralised by the growing number of vehicles—over 10,000 per month.

BRT’s biggest advance, experts point out, is that it can carry nearly 300 passengers per trip, which may lead to 60-80 less cars on the road.

And unlike other mass transport systems, Hook says, BRT changes the pattern of pedestrian traffic, forcing city planners to give them space.

‘‘An ideal system would have bicycle tracks and a feeder system with smaller buses and sidewalks,’’ says Hook, adding that the catch is to look at appropriate stretches, dedicated lanes, operations and management, all at the same time.

The BRT system seems to have won over funding majors too, such as the World Bank. ‘‘It is difficult to get governments to ask us for loans for urban transport. We would be very keen to finance an initiative like the BRT,’’ says Todd Johnson, a World Bank official. BRT was launched in Brazil’s Curitaba in the 1970s—medium-sized buses carried 280 passengers each—before gaining ground rapidly.

In Asia, BRT runs in Kunming in China, and Taipei in Taiwan—it is being set up in Beijing and Jakarta.

Says Cornie Huizenga from Clean Air Initiative, which organised the Agra workshop attended by over 600 global experts: ‘‘We are forming a network of cities that are interested in BRT so that they can get together and share experiences.’’

‘‘Delhi is a pilot study for the experiment in Indian conditions. A lot will depend on how public perceives it,’’ says Hook.

However, the Delhi experiment is far from a perfect launch. For starters, officials are yet to gather crucial information, such as sufficient origin-destination data, due to lack of a political consensus on the issue.

For instance, policy-makers have chosen a crowded stretch in South Delhi for the pilot initiative and plan to allow the existing bus service to operate on the same stretch.