Is Pune’s BRTS a failure?

PUNE: NP NEWS 24 ONLINE- 12 years after launching the first national pilot project, Pune Municipal Corporation(PMC) has not been able to make any progress on the bus rapid transport system in the city.

In 2006, the civic administration launched and promised to construct 112km of BRTS routes presenting it as the solution for the city’s transport problems. However, nor administration or any political leader showed any keen attention to the project progress.

For which, soon after the launch, the PMC received 1,013.97 crores as an instalment from the central government to implement this project. In addition, the PMC has further spent around Rs100 crore from its budget to improve the pilot BRTS and for maintenance of the other BRTS corridors. Though, the end result is that only 30 km of the route has been functional so far and even this is in a poor condition.

Road department head Aniruddha Pawaskar said that the PMC wants to eliminate the mistakes committed in the pilot BRTS, such as level boarding, closed entrance at bus stop and road crossings. It is thus making changes to the Ahmednagar and Aandi road BRTS by ensuring level boarding. The work on the 6.5km route from Katraj to Swargate is nearing completion, but as work of bus stations is incomplete not operational. Whereas, the work on the 7km stretch from Swargate to Hadapsar will start in the next financial year (2019-2020).

 “We are planning to undertake BRTS work on Ganeshkhind road and on the old Pune- Mumbai road. Work on the bus stops between Raj Bhavan and Bremen chowk began, but it was stopped because of some problems,” Pawaskar added.

PMC and the Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd (PMPML), claiming that despite spending crores on the BRTS corridors, the infrastructure is in poor condition. Sadly, the automatic doors on Ahmednagar road and Alandi road BRTS routes are not functioning. Passenger information systems such as electronic display screens with bus arrivals and voice announcements are also not working. There is a need to impose greater accountability on the BRTS officials and concerned authorities need to be penalised for not maintaining the facility which was built with the tax payer’s money.

A civic activist said, “It’s sad that despite getting a grant, PMC is not able to execute this project effectively. BRTS is good concept, but the administration and politicians did not have willingness to execute it properly. The condition of existing BRTS corridor is very poor and shabby. We as civic activists suggested various measures, but the administration did not want to execute it. Considering this, recently, we resigned from the BRTS committee which was formed by PMC commissioner.”