For 1,000 people, just half a bus in Delhi: Government study finds public transport system suffering

NEW DELHI: The preliminary findings of a study commissioned by the urban development ministry at the Centre has found that the availability of public transport (buses and Metro) in Delhi per 1,000 people is a shocking 0.504.

Worse, the average waiting time for all 517 DTC bus routes is 70 minutes, probably because of the less frequent bus trips in sparsely populated undeveloped areas. Out of a total of 6,455 buses in Delhi, only 2,202 (i.e. 34 %) are according to urban bus specifications , says the report.

The joint study by Institute of Urban Transport (India) and Urban Mass Transit Company Limited is expected to provide a comprehensive view of service-level benchmarks for urban transport in Delhi and will take two years to complete . The preliminary observations submitted to the ministry indicate that there is a significant scope for improvement in the current public transport facilities in the city.

The report describes how, on an average, DTC rolls out 5,185 buses for operations on a day out of a total of 6,088 in its fleet. Besides, 247 private operator buses and 120 DMRC feeder buses bring the total number of buses operating in the city daily to 5,552.

Metro operates 966 coaches daily, adding an equivalent of 2,898 buses to the tally (one coach is equivalent to three buses). Thus the total number of buses operating daily is 8,450. This is how the study has derived the figure of 0.504 public transport per 1,000 people, taking the population of Delhi to be roughly (as per census 2011) 167.53 lakh.

Delhi is the largest metropolis by area and second largest by population in the country. Surrounded by four major urban centres (Noida, Ghaziabad , Faridabad and Gurgaon), it covers 1483 sq km, with half the area being urban. Despite a spiralling population and road network, it has 6,088 buses — owned and operated by DTC — plying on 517 routes.

The average waiting time for public transport users as calculated from the scheduled headways – measurement of the distance or time between vehicles in a transit system – of DTC bus routes is 70 minutes, says the report, explaining that the waiting time is high because it takes into account the headways of all routes, including those which serve sparsely populated undeveloped areas with less frequent bus services.

The total route length of all the 657 routes registered with State Transport Authority is 16,200 km, including suburban and overlapping routes. However , the suburban routes are very less and have a negligible contribution to the overall route length, notes the report.

Only 34% (2,202) of the 6,455 buses make the cut as far as urban bus specifications are concerned . These are the 958 lowfloor AC and 87 low-floor non-AC buses, introduced by DTC in 2010-11 ; 247 buses operated by private operators under the cluster scheme; and 120 buses operated by DMRC.

The ministry has the following advice to offer: “Efficient management of urban transport strategies can be easily achieved with the help of latest technologies” . However, intelligent transport system (ITS) facilities are not used in all types of public transport.