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An alternative to metro rail

Raja Dawn

The Delhi Metro Rail is scheduled to be operational later this year.

The public transport system in the city leaves a lot to be desired in terms of carrying capacity and service standards. After all, the union territory of Delhi has an urban area of 647 sq km and a total area of 1,483 sq km, spreading out widely in every direction. The average distance covered for going to work even seven years ago was around 10 km. Kolkata, the only other Indian city with a metro rail service, stretches 17 km from the north to the south, the area being 187 sq km.

In Delhi, the inconvenience of the public transport system makes people opt for personal modes of conveyance. Not surprisingly, the number of cars owned by people in Delhi touches the combined car population of Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai.

The space occupied by a bus on the road is approximately three times the space occupied by a car, but it has at least 25-50 times greater carrying capacity. So even with twice the road space available per person compared to Kolkata, Delhi is facing the problem of congestion.

But is the establishment of the metro system a solution? The answer is:Yes and no.

Railway journeys are safer and more reliable. The fares are the same as those for buses, if not cheaper. The biggest advantage a rail journey offers is that more people can be ferried in a shorter while. In a metro system, something between 50,000 and 70,000 passengers can travel in an hour, on average. Compared to this, the existing system of public transport at its full capacity can barely move 10,000 people.

But rail transport does not come cheap. Also, once it is in place, mistakes in planning cannot be rectified. It is not surprising, therefore, that the costs of the Delhi metro rail are so high.

Around Rs 85 billion is being spent to set up a 52-km track in the first phase. This implies Rs 1.69 billion per kilometre (excluding the annual operation and maintenance cost of Rs 2.3 billion)!

It is an established fact that the the maximum “influence zone” of a transport corridor is half a kilometre on its either side (about 5-7 minutes’ walk). So, in the absence of feeder services, the 52-km metro rail can cover a population in only 52 sq km of the total area of the city.

This is less than 7 per cent of the 640 sq km — the area for urbanisation set by the Delhi Master Plan, 2001. This calculation does not consider the Delhi metropolitan area of 3,182 sq km comprising the union territory of Delhi, Ghaziabad, Noida, Ballabhgarh, Bahadurgarh and Kundli, although these contribute substantially to the city’s traffic load.

Feasibility studies made before the metro rail project began claimed that the first phase of the 52 km would account for 15-20 per cent of the 10 million trips which the citizens of Delhi make every day. Given that the “zone of influence” of the first phase covers only 7 per cent of the city area, the projection appears unrealistic, whatever be the survey procedure and travel demand analysis methods adopted.

So what is the alternative? In comparison to the Rs 1.69- billion-a-kilometre cost of the metro, the high-capacity bus system (HCBS) at Bogota (the capital of Columbia), one of the costliest of such systems, was put in place for around $5 million a kilometre (around Rs 250 million a km) in 1994.

This included real estate development with public conveniences and parks along the HCBS corridor.

By a slight modification of the existing road cross-sections, a capacity of 20,000-30,000 passengers per hour per direction is achieved in such systems. With a proper road design and physical segregation of bus lanes, an average speed of up to 30 km per hour has been achieved in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

It takes just few months to install HCBS, and there is the flexibility of dismantling it in case the system proves to be ineffective. Apart from Bogota and Sao Paulo, many South American cities, including Curitiba and Porto Allegro in Brazil, have followed suit with excellent results. Curitiba’s success with a network of HCBS is now part of town-planning folklore.

The metro rail could cost Rs 140 billion more, with the revised cost working out at Rs 1.7 billion per km (even without taking inflation into account). This can still be avoided. The money saved can be utilised for alternative systems. The total road length of Delhi is around 974 km. Of this, around 450 km can accommodate changes to incorporate segregated bus corridors (right of way 45 km). Even if we spend Rs 100 million per km, an investment of only Rs 45 billion would make Delhi a city with the best public transport system in the world in a year or so, with comfortable and high-speed bus services in most areas available within minutes.

In Kolkata or even Mumbai, high-capacity buses may be unfeasible due to narrow roads. But there is good reason to try segregated bus lanes. Bangalore is setting up one such system with Swedish collaboration.

The author is a transport planner working with the Asian Institute of Transport Development. These are his personal views.

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