Delhi govt dusts up bus route rationalisation, aims to provide to remote corners

The Delhi government is working on its much delayed plan to rationalise bus routes in the city so that every passenger is able to board a bus within 15 minutes and within a radius of 500 metres of wherever they are, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Wednesday.

Kejriwal held a review meeting on Wednesday to revive Delhi’s route rationalisation project that was initiated between 2018 and 2019, and later put on the back-burner, first due to the assembly elections and then due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Currently, 7,200 buses operate on 625 routes in Delhi.The problem is that many of these routes overlap, resulting in some routes being overfed while others remaining underserved.

If the route rationalisation plan is implemented, buses will run every 5 to 10 minutes on 274 of the 625 regular bus routes. Besides, buses will continue to run on the remaining 351 routes in the same manner as they do now, according to the plan.

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“The route rationalisation project will extend bus services to every single corner of Delhi, and ensure timeliness of all buses. Under the new road map, buses will be available all over Delhi within a waiting time of five to 10 minutes. Bus service will be provided even in remote areas of Delhi where there is no service at present. Feeder buses will be provided for last mile connectivity from Metro stations and connectivity from Delhi to NCR will be further improved. After the implementation of these suggestions, every passenger in Delhi will be able to access a bus within 15 minutes within a radius of 500m,” Kejriwal said after the meeting.

At present, the bus service coverage in Delhi is about 49% -- going by the accessibility standard of 15 minutes (waiting time) and 500 metres (of any given point in Delhi). The government now plans to increase this to 90-95%, which means that buses will be available even in the remotest corner and that too frequently.

Sharing details about the project, Kejriwal tweeted, “How to use the existing fleet of buses in Delhi most efficiently? How many more buses do we need? How to integrate all modes of transport? Today, I had a discussion with senior officials of the transport department on the Route Rationalisation” proposal. We will soon seek public feedback on the same.”

The government also plans to create a hierarchy for modes of transport -- super trunk routes, primary routes and secondary routes. The super trunk routes will be “direction oriented” mass transit corridors, on the lines of the Delhi Metro. It aims to connect central business districts such as Connaught Place, Nehru Place and Chandni Chowk, office complexes such as ITO and Central Secretariat and transport nodes such as Kashmere Gate ISBT and New Delhi Railway Station with other parts of the city.

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Buses on primary routes will not necessarily be direction oriented and will be available at a frequency of about 10 minutes.

Then there are the secondary routes, which will act like feeder routes, and the frequency on these routes will be 15-20 minutes, transport officials said.

The number of standard buses will rise from 7,200 to 8,494 in the near future with the government acquiring new buses to augment its fleet, officials said. They added that nearly 2,000 mini buses and midi buses (slightly larger than mini buses but smaller than a full-size bus) will also be operated on 120 routes to provide last-mile connectivity. This will be in addition to the 480 buses that will operate on 44 routes as part of the Metro feeder bus service.