New Delhi: Despite the failure of the national capital’s maiden Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor, which was dismantled by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) dispensation due to its “poor design,” the city government will now identify new road stretches for setting up BRT corridors. The transport department of the city government has proposed to conduct a thorough study to find out the road stretches where it will be feasible to construct such corridors. The corridor had been mired into controversies over perpetual bottlenecks due to dedicated bus lanes and car lanes and was scrapped, incurring a cost of around Rs 25 crore last year.
The Arvind Kejriwal government had dismantled the Moolchand-Ambedkar Nagar BRT corridor, a Rs 180-crore traffic project built in 2008, saying it was built without proper planning. However, it had accepted that the concept of such corridors was not bad. During Assembly elections in 2015, AAP had promised to dismantle the BRT corridor as “it was causing traffic snarls” on the stretch.
“As per the plan, the transport department will identify such road stretches where new BRT corridors can come up. New BRT corridors will be built based only on a proper planning so that such structures do not cause traffic snarls later as we have seen in the case of the previous BRT corridor,” a senior government official said.
The official added that after the proposal is cleared by the transport commissioner, it will be sent for the approval of higher government authorities.
Last year, in January, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia had started the process of dismantling the BRT corridor by striking a hammer and by taking a swipe at the previous Dikshit government for its “copy-paste” work.
“Congress leaders might have gone abroad and copied the BRT and pasted it in Delhi without proper planning, which was a dangerous work. Even cheating requires application of mind. The concept of BRT is not bad. In several countries, BRT corridors are being used and there is also a dedicated lane for buses. But, there is a proper system to introduce such a project,” Mr Sisodia had said.
