Delhi neglects shrinking bus fleet as private cars rush in

The number of buses in Delhi has decreased over the years. In the 1980s, there were 57 buses for every one lakh Delhiites. By 2007-08 the figure had fallen to 34, and today it stands at just 25. In itself, the numerical slide should imply the streets are freer. But what it indicates instead is the decline of a reliable public transport system - and the clogging of roads by private vehicles.

Till only a few decades ago, public transport - mainly buses - comprised 60 per cent of the traffic. It is the other way now - private cars make up 60 per cent of vehicular population today . There are fewer buses of the state-run Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), the city's emblematic public transporter, on the roads. The DTC fleet has come down from a high of 5,600 buses in 2012 to 4,705 now after the scrap ping of many aged machines. No new buses have been added to the fleet in the past two years. Four years ago, the government also opened up public transport to private operators in a bid to ease DTC's workload. But of the targeted 4,000 such buses, there are only 1,465 of them running on the streets, their expansion hampered by the lack of parking depots.

Experts point out that the increasing congestion on the capital's roads stems partly from buses ceding road space to private cars."Congestion is not a problem, it is only a symptom of a problem," says Amit Bhatt of Embarq, a transport planning body . Anumita Roy Chowdhury of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) adds, "The fact that we are talking about congestion means that the critical phase is here. Action needs to be taken immediately ." It isn't as if the government doesn't agree. A committee set up by the ministry of urban development last year decided that Delhi would be provided with not only more buses, but also 124 km of special bus corridors and 140 km of new roads, flyovers and elevated corridors.

However, experts such as Roychowdhury and Shreya Gadepalli of the Insitute for Transport and Development Policy caution against a focus on road infrastructure. Gadepalli points out that Delhi already has more street space per capita than any other Indian city and characterises the laying of more roads as "a futile attempt to fulfil the insatiable demand for car-oriented infrastructure". "The real solution," she says, "is better public transport and stringent measures to control personal motor vehicle use."

With a daily ridership of 45 lakh commuters, DTC's reach is huge. Yet, inefficiencies in the system as well as the government's refusal to bolster its fleet have meant that the bus system remains unreliable.The government's refusal to rationalise the bus routes is another bottleneck. DTC buses make 40,000 trips every day over two shifts, while private cluster buses do around 13,000.The bus routes are decided randomly, based on commuter requests and political instruc tions rather than scientific ground survey inputs.

The gov ernment's attention, however, has been on building roads and flyovers, on which it spends 82% of its transport budget. Diverting funds towards improving the bus system would be a big step forward. "The biggest advantage of buses is their capacity to carry a larger number of commuters in a safe environment," points out RS Minhas, spokesman for DTC.

Of course, the burden of the bus network has been eased by the Delhi Metro. It takes care of the transport needs of 27 lakh commuters every day, and by the time Phase IV of its expansion is completed in 2021, it is expected to have a ridership of over 40 lakh. However, transport planners say that the reach of the Metro is limited.While metro systems are effective in carrying passengers over long distances, they lose their edge when it comes to shorter trips, those that form a major part of the daily travel needs of citizens.

The only way forward in such a situation is to boost the bus sys tem. "Buy 11,200 buses and 4,700 mini-buses, build 620 km of bus corridors and provide seamless integration between the bus sys tem and the Metro," prescribes Gadepalli. Augment this by increasing bus frequency, creating common ticketing, and boosting the passenger information service and bus performance monitoring, adds Roychowdhury .In addition, the government should create footpaths and cycle tracks along the arterial street network to ensure that by the time the Metro network is completed, almost every locality in the capital is within 400 meters of some station or bus stop. It is this that can significantly reduce the capital's dependence on private cars.