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BRTS- Bus Rapid Transit System - Feasibility Analysis of Implementation in Bangalore City Donal Nixon D’Souza and Amar S.M, M.S Ramaiah Institute of Technology/Civil Engineering, Bangalore, India Email: donalnixon@gmail.com M.S Ramaiah Institute of Technology/Civil Engineering, Bangalore, India Email: amarsm90@gmail.com numerous multi-national companies to have an office and has caused rapid growth of population as well as vehicular population, so much that Bangalore today has the largest two-wheeler population in the world. There are other well known industries in the city along with numerous schools and colleges.

The City of Bangalore is spread over an area of 709.5 square kilometers. The population as on June 2009 is approximately 75,00,000. Bangalore city has a network of 4300 km of roads. The number of vehicles on road is 28,02,886 as on Feb 2007. The two wheelers count is 20,48,476. At times of the day it might take as much as 4 hours to travel a distance of 10 km within the city. For the city in order to decongest its roads and to make it easier for the public to commute, it is of utmost importance that the new bus system wins the faith of the people initially. The stretches we are interested in implementing are the ring roads.

Abstract— The City of Bangalore, Karnataka, India is well known for its traffic congestions and large traffic density. The rising population has worsened the situation. Due to high increase in vehicular growth, the city is prone to frequent congestions during peak hours; leading to jams causing huge delays in travel times. Also, this has caused rise in fuel consumptions and air pollution levels. The mass transportation facilities already existent have not gained momentum in the city mainly due to poor connectivity, low travel speeds (due to frequent traffic jams). In spite of numerous measures, the mass transportation facilities haven’t controlled the rising traffic rate. Also the upcoming METRO network in the city does not have an efficient feeder network.

Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) can be employed on important stretches in co-ordination with the upcoming METRO to make mass transportation more successful. This system has dedicated lanes and signaling system for buses and thus is independent of the on road traffic, aimed at decreasing congestion and pollution by encouraging Bangalore motorists to use the BRTS instead of driving.

The authors would like to discuss the feasibility of implementing this system and discuss the advantages and disadvantages. The final section is dedicated to future developments to system and how it can be improved to make life easier for commuting Bangaloreans.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW BRTS basically consists of segregated lanes dedicated exclusively to these buses. The outermost or the innermost lanes can be reserved for the system. In case of innermost lanes bus stops can be set up in the median to further improve the flow.

BRTS first witnessed its major growth in Curitiba, Brazil in 1974. This urged other cities to develop similar systems. In the late 1990s, BRTS grew rapidly in Quito, Equador , Los Angeles, USA and Bogotá, Columbia. The TransMilenio project in Bogotá was a huge success and set cutting-edge standards for the forthcoming BRT systems across the world.

As of 2005, up to 70 BRT systems have been witnessed all over the globe.

Keywords— Rapid transit, transport, Bangalore, BRTS.

I. INTRODUCTION A city will be very well developed if it has excellent public transportation facilities. This transportation facility should be people friendly and efficient. Governments have spent huge amounts in planning efficient transportation facilities, but these plans haven’t been at par with the rising population and the rising standards of living. This paper is aimed in planning a bus rapid transit system at a particular part of the city where BRTS can be implemented. Using approximations with various parameters and calculating travel time with statistical data, two traffic situations, one with BRTS and the other without it has been studied. Based on the statistical study and a feasibility analysis, an effort has been made to draw a conclusion about the system and its effects on Bangalore’s society.

Bangalore is the fifth largest city in India, and capital of the state of Karnataka. The IT sector is Bangalore is a rapidly growing industry. The IT sector has earned Bangalore the name of ‘Silicon City of India’. This has made the city to let © 2011 ACEE DOI: 02.CEMC.2011.01. 504

III. RELATED WORKS IN INDIA In India eight cities have started getting approval and issuing of tenders for implementation. They are Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Indore, Jaipur, Pune, Vishakhapatnam, Hyderabad and Nagpur. Ahmedabad, Indore and Jaipur have issued tenders in the last two weeks for Phase-I of BRTS. Pune has got the approval for BRTS and Bhopal is expected get a go ahead for the system soon. Proposals in other cities are at various stages of appraisal and implementation.

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IV. SCENARIO IN BANGALORE The upcoming metro length in the city is 33 km which runs along two alignments, i.e. east-west and north-south.

Bangalore being a polycentrically developed city, the origin and destination patterns vary greatly. In order to have a good access to the upcoming metro, a quicker and efficient bus feeder network is required. The only available solution to this is to employ BRTS at certain stretches to have a good integrated transport model in the city.

V. EXISTING MODEL Buses travel with local traffic between Niagara and BEL circle; 04 signals and 08 stops along the way. During lean hours, one bus takes 25 min. Each Bus Stop takes 15 sec and signal 90 sec. Traffic speed is dynamic throughout the day and decreases exponentially to 6km/hr. from 15km/hr. between 7am to 9am; and increases again to 15 gradually from 1PM onwards till 5PM after which it decreases further and then increases to about 20. The distance assumed is approximately 10 km. In this case, the study was done from 6 am to 11 pm on a working day. It was found that the travel times vary significantly for a person to travel from Nagawara to BEL circle.

Hence it is evident that BRTS saves travel time at all traffic conditions.

VIII. TRANSPORT DEMAND MODELLING Travel demand model is required to forecast the future travel demand so as to assess the strategies required for handling demand. The following primary surveys were carried out between June-July 2011: A. Household Survey(1000 cases) B. Bus Stop Survey(50 cases) C. Classified Volume Survey at 10 screen locations on Outer Ring Road D. Speed and Delay Survey along the Outer Ring Road using moving car method E. Road Network Inventory The following sub-models were generated to forecast the traffic demand on the network and to assess the alternative strategies to handle this demand:

Figure 1: Model for initial situation with all parameters.

A. Trip-end prediction or trip generation and attractions to determine the number of person trips leaving a zone irrespective of destination and the number of trips attracted to a zone irrespective of origin.

B. Trip distribution to determine the linking of the trip origins (generation) with their destinations (attraction).

VI. PROPOSED MODEL Assumptions: Buses have constant speed of 30 km. /hr. which is not affected by external traffic due to Dedicated lane allocation, there is a prioritized signal system in place; the vehicular traffic follows the same speeds as the ordinary model, just that in this case the buses will not be affected by that traffic; the service would be direct. On studying the above for one day; with same traffic trends as the one for present scenario; we found a huge decrease in travel time, which came down by more than 50%.

Modal split was determined to know the division of trips between public transport modes and different private modes.

Trip assignment was used to allocate the trips between a pair of zones to the most likely routes on the network.

XI. RESULTS FROM SURVEY STATISTICS

• • •

Per-capita trip rate generation is found to be 0.9.

Modal split was found to be 45:55 between public and private.

From Opinion survey, 87% felt the need for BRTS.

Figure 2: Model for BRTS system with all parameters.

X. COMPARISON VII. SIMULATION RESULTS

Indian cities of Pune and Ahmedabad have BRTS system.

The public responded positively to the BRTS system and travel times changed drastically. It could be seen that the traffic came under control simply because the buses were no

From the experiments carried out by simulating both the models, the traffic speeds obtained are as shown.

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Poster Paper Proc. of Int. Colloquiums on Computer Electronics Electrical Mechanical and Civil 2011 CONCLUSION

longer on the road, in fact now they had their own road. The BRTS proved to be one of the highlights of Pune for the 2008 Commonwealth games which it successfully hosted.

Though the BRTS of Pune and Ahmedabad in the initial phase was a huge success, there were some areas where it could do better: The bus shelters were at the middle of the road, so crossing the road after alighting or before boarding was a big hassle, it is suggested that over head walkways be constructed for pedestrians to cross easily. The BRTS proposed uses an Information system for displaying advertisement messages transmitted via satellite; this system could be used to show current status of the bus in terms of timing and location as well as the status of buses available from the next stop. A system could be put in place to ease travel for physically challenged passengers. Since the lane remains unused most of the time; other buses which are nonBRTS may also be allowed to ply on the route with clever planning so as to extend the benefits of BRTS to them too.

The main lesson learnt from Pune BRTS is the utilization of the outer lane instead of the inner one; this eliminates the use of Foot Over Bridges. Also in a signal stop, when the BRTS bus takes a turn in Pune, it halts all the main traffic as it occupies the inner lane and has to traverse all other lanes to take a turn; this adds to the already chaotic traffic situation.

Another good point is the Public Private partnership; this idea will introduce competition into the picture and thus many corporate vie for the BRTS ownership providing better services than the entities will other and only adding to the benefit of the customer who is the general public. The idea of the transfer ticket is also a good one; for. E.g. If a passenger is taking the BRTS till a certain length and then deviating from course taking an ordinary bus then she/he should be allowed to purchase an integrated ticket which is cheaper than the total of both the separate fares, thus encouraging people to use not only the BRTS but also the ordinary buses.

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The BRTS is a young concept but has been accepted worldwide with open arms. It has been instrumental in bringing up rapidly developing cities and contributing to their sustainability. Though successfully implemented in many developed countries, it has to yet find its feet in many developing countries. It has incorporated the use of latest technology from Efficient land use policy to High-Tech Hybrid buses to GPS navigation and tracking to smart card ticketing and has opened the avenues for more innovation in the field of mass transportation; This system takes only a fraction of time and resources as compared to a subway/metro system but still has all benefits. In the 21st century, urban transport has taken the much needed deviation from a plain point to point transit system to a more modern and effective system which would accept all challenges thrown on it with a smile and something the city administration and more importantly its people could be proud of.

REFERENCES [1] Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (Bangalore city Corporation), www.bbmp.gov.in [2] Bangalore Development Authority, www.bdabangalore.org [3] Bangalore City Traffic Police, www.bangalorecitytrafficpolice.gov.in [4] Census of India; Government of India; Ministry of Home Affairs., www.censusindia.net [5]Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation, www.bmtcinfo.com [6] The Hindu, 17/07/2007 [7] Ahmedabad BRTS, www.ahmedabadbrts.com [8] www.wikipedia.com

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