In a significant move bound to change lifestyle of daily commuters, the AAP government has started consultation for setting up state-of-the-art elevated corridors having double-decker roads above the surface roads in the national capital. The proposed 300-km corridor will reportedly have one of the levels fixed for buses and another will be a paid corridor for cars.
The proposed project, which is at a very early planning stage, comes after chief minister Arvind Kejriwal ruled out surface BRT corridors in Delhi. The proposed project is likely to be designed in such a manner that the corridors will criss-cross the city to ensure speedy and timely bus service at par with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).
A senior bureaucrat said that the administration was already in consultation with top infrastructure developers to get the proposed project implemented at a minimum cost and at the earliest in the city.
He said that the main idea of developing the new corridor was to ensure that the city’s DTC service is at par with the Delhi Metro.
Explaining the need for the elevated corridors, the bureaucrat said: “People park their cars at Metro stations to commute by Metro service. But no one in the city parks their car to use the bus service. The main reason for this is that our buses do not run on time. We need to improve our bus service at the earliest.”
The proposed corridors are expected to cost much less to the state exchequer than adding new lines to the already existing Metro service.
Initial estimates show that the cost of the elevated road corridors will work out at Rs 100 crore for each km. The cost of the one-km Metro line infrastructure works about Rs 3,000 crore.As far as the proposed move to set up paid corridors is concerned, another officer said that the main idea behind this is to recover the cost of the project from those who are in a position to pay more for hassle-free traffic. The officer said that the government was likely to go for global tendering to procure new buses in the city.
At present, there are only two manufactures — Tata and Ashok Leyland — whose buses are very costly. “The two manufacturers have a monopoly in the market. We have already created a database of international manufacturers and will issue global tenders soon.“
The AAP government had planned to add 10,000 more buses to its DTC fleet, but could not do so due to long negotiations with the bus manufactures.
During the erstwhile Congress regime as well, the Sheila Dikshit government had floated global tenders, but all in vain.
