By Supriya Kurane

Think rail, use buses. This appears to be the perfect solution for India's overcrowded cities seeking cheaper and more efficient public transport systems. What it entails is a bus system that operates like a suburban rail line service, by combining intelligent transport systems technology with dedicated transit ways which calls for specialised stations. Although the buses themselves will not be 'high capacity', the whole system works as a high-capacity option through automated fare collection and rapid disgorging of passengers.

Does this combination of two different systems sound like a futuristic idea? Not so. In Delhi, the high capacity bus system (HCBS), or Bus Rapid Transit, as the system is known, is all set to roll later this year. The government is in the process of awarding the contract, and work on the first corridor of an ambitious 130-km first phase is expected to start by February. The entire phase is scheduled to be ready before the Commonwealth Games in 2010.

The major advantage of a HCBS is that it is a decidedly cheaper option. While the (elevated) metro costs an astronomical Rs 100 crore/km to construct, the bus system works out to just Rs 6 crore-10 crore/km. The special buses are available for about Rs 35 lakh. The cost of travel is also considerably lower at Re 1/km. Besides, it is a quieter and people-friendlier system on the road.

Here is how the system works. Articulated buses operate on exclusive bus-ways, using one or two lanes in each direction. These lanes can run in the middle of the road or along the service roads. Passengers can buy tickets only at the station - not on the bus. The station is the critical element. When the bus arrives, its two doors open simultaneously with those of the station, and a hundred passengers can walk in and out. The bus floor is at the same level as the station, making the inflows and outflows faster.

This is not a venture into the unknown. It is a proven system that changed the face of Bogota, the capital of Colombia, from a hopelessly congested city of 7 million to a model transport system. And it is all the idea of Enrique Penalosa, who was its mayor from 1998 to 2001. His model is people-centred. It restricts the use of private cars, and gives priority to children and public spaces. Hundreds of kilometres of sidewalks, bicycle paths and pedestrian streets were built to give space to the HCBS - and people. The transformation of Bogota was completed in three years flat.

"Building more roads and flyovers is not the way to build Indian urban infrastructure," says the internationally-honoured Penalosa
who was in India to convince urban and transport planners, infrastructure developers and citizen groups to adopt his model. His point is simple: more roads and flyovers might ease traffic congestion, but breed more cars and result in greater congestion in the future. "Every city has to decide what it wants to look like. We chose to build a city for people, not for automobiles," he says.

The HCBS does make a city move faster - and not just Bogota. There is also Curitiba in Brazil. Long before Penalosa began changing the face of his city, Curitiba had rejected the metro and the light rail system because they were too expensive. Instead, it decided, in 1975, to spruce up its bus system and design it on the lines of a surface rail system with exclusive right of way and elevated platforms. HCBS, in fact, has its origins in Curitiba. Its integrated transport network has 72 km of exclusive bus lanes, 2,000 buses and 233 'tube stations' where passengers pay the fare and board buses via ramps. The transport services are differentiated by function and colour, and differently coloured buses provide each type of service.

India was all set to emulate Curitiba in 1997, and could have made Bogota a latecomer. A group of professors from IIT Delhi, studying road transport systems, approached the Delhi government with a proposal to try out high capacity buses. But the city had just given the go-ahead for the metro, and was not interested in a bus-based system. There was also scepticism if it would work in Indian cities, replete with narrow roads, footpaths occupied by hawkers, and pedestrians ambling on the roads.

There have been other attempts. In 1999, Bangalore decided on a HCBS, based on a feasibility study by the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency. But the idea was inexplicably scrapped and replaced with a plan for an overhead metro system.

"Often Third World upper classes oppose bus-systems because they would rather use the road space for their cars. Generally, they
prefer subways and metros... because they imagine that by putting the poor underground, traffic problems will go away. When rail
systems are chosen in Third World cities, limited funds permit building only a couple of lines and that serves not more than 15 per cent of daily trips," says Penalosa, who himself scrapped proposals for a light rail transit system (LRTS) and a metro before implementing HCBS.

In Bogota, the 100-km-long network manages to transport 35,000 people per hour per direction, which is more than what rail systems in that area can manage. TransMilenio, the HCBS of Bogota, is rather sophisticated and uses 165 passenger buses on a contractual agreement with private operators. These run in the middle of avenues and not on the sides, so that vehicles entering and exiting driveways, or delivery vehicles, don't become obstacles. This needs just one station, instead of one in each direction.

In India though, most civic authorities are still caught up in the debate over what is a superior system - suburban trains, metro, LRTS or Skybus. Delhi appears to be more willing to experiment. The government has sanctioned Rs 33 crore for the first 6 km, and the remaining Rs 60 crore to complete the 19-km corridor will be sanctioned by next week.

To start with, it would have to redesign existing roads along the proposed HCBS corridor to have dedicated bus lanes, install intelligent signalling systems and build bus shelters. The basic changes required include provision of a segregated lane for slow-moving vehicles in addition to service roads. Then, at least one lane can be reserved for buses, while the other two can be for cars, scooters and other motor vehicles.

But this still leaves the critical questions of buses. When the Delhi government invited bids a year and a half ago, only Telco qualified. It has designed six high capacity buses for Delhi, complete with low floors, wide automatic doors and more standing space for passengers. In the next three years, the transport department of Delhi plans to replace its bus fleet with these buses.

While Delhi is the first city to actually implement a HCBS, Mumbai which is currently going full throttle with the World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project and Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project, is also giving the system a serious thought. Last week, P.L. Bongirwar, adviser to IDFC, made a presentation to the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority on using the HCBS to connect Mumbai's east-west corridors. But there are reservations on whether such a system will work in Mumbai with its high passenger density.

While Mumbai dithers over the issue, other Asian cities have gone right ahead with the HCBS. Kunming is the first of 20 cities in China to have it, while Jakarta got its first 20-km lane last year. Taipei boasts a network of more than 100 km. Delhi will join the select band with 19 km, hopefully, by end-2005.