Fearing resentment, party mum on BRT
That’s the headline from The Times of India, in Delhi. And boy does that headline sting.
It seems the ruling party in Delhi is feeling some blowback from their ‘on the cheap’ transit system - and the opposition party is ready to paint the sitting government with the failure of BRT. This could get ugly for BRT in a hurry - at least in India. I’m not sure when their elections are, but someone needs to be punished for putting pedestrians in peril.
Here’s the article in full:
NEW DELHI: Nearly every major transport project of the Delhi government finds a mention in the Congress’s list of achievements or figure in its future plans. However, in what may be seen as an understated confession of a failure, government’s ambitious Bus Rapid Transit System (BRT) fails to find a mention.
Realizing that highlighting BRT may go against the Congress during elections, the party seems to have dropped the specific mention of the project and instead used terms like multi-modal transport systems. Interestingly, [opposition party] BJP plans to make BRT a major poll issue.
The BRT project was one of the much-publicized mega plans of the government and was projected as a dream scheme that would set new standards in public transport. However, numerous traffic jams and a spate of accidents soon after its launch showed how the government had tripped in its calculations. The government though put up a brave front, refusing to term BRT a failure. In fact, it kept asserting that BRT would work and change the face of public transport. That jams abound in the car lanes even now is another matter.
But while the government has been insisting that BRT will improve, the Congress manifesto does not reflect the same. From Metro routes to the CNG fleet to the new low-floor buses, the manifesto talks about the achievements in the transport sector. However, BRT fails to find any mention in this section.
In another huge section on “transport” in the list of future plans, projects like monorail corridors, light rail transit network, modernization of street lighting, and widening of Nelson Mandela Marg can be found but BRT is again not mentioned.
We’ve covered the anti-pedestrian Delhi BRT before - even suggesting that degraded pedestrian conditions brought about by bus rapid transit systems (BRTs) were ‘a necessary condition of any BRT.’ That might seem obvious to some, but it can be important to restate the obvious, so we can clear away the cheerleading and get to what the real effects of transportation schemes are ‘on the ground’ - you know, where people actually have to deal with them, live with and near them, and heaven-forbid, even….ride them.
As a point of reference, Cleveland’s population density is less than 40% of San Francisco’s. That’s a lot fewer people to scare off that road, fewer people to ride those buses (which could be a good thing, because buses don’t have the capacity of light rail), and fewer people to dehumanize and degrade and disrespect.
I could see how some countries like Bogota were in an emergency smog situation, and they had one-tenth (1/10th) the per-capita wealth of America, and they didn’t have the population density of San Francisco, and they weren’t worried about strengthening the ability of urban highways to more completely split their city, and therefore maybe they really did need to try to do something on the super-duper cheap - I could be willing to listen to that argument. I still might not agree with it, but I could probably take it seriously for a few seconds. But here in America? One of the richest countries on earth? The ‘we cannot afford it’ argument is just not credible.
It should be noted that Cleveland did actually manage to get some crappy little bike lanes out of their anti-pedestrian BRT deal. Those lanes ought to help thrust Cleveland into the bicycle mode share range where the percentage becomes meaningful — ’statistically significant’.
The entire Euclid Corridor project cost around $200 million - most of the money came from state and federal sources - i.e. the money was ‘free,’ as long as you built what the Feds wanted you to build. But let’s say the project didn’t happen at all, and instead, the few million dollars that Cleveland did spend on the line instead went to pedestrian and bike infrastructure improvements, and maybe some BPOD — bike- and pedestrian-oriented development (like TOD). How much better would Cleveland be right this very moment? And the operating cost of the new pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure? Just some money to clear off the ice and snow from the bike paths and sidewalks.
We haven’t had time for the Cleveland BRT blowback to occur yet - I give it about three months total (another 9 or 10 weeks from now) until Clevelanders start saying, “WTF?”.
Then it’s every elected and transportation official for themselves.
Fun times!
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