By 2021, Delhi will have 26 special bus corridors of 294 km. The Delhi government has already cleared the first of these, the 16.3-km Ambedkar Nagar-Delhi Gate corridor, under its proposed high-capacity busy system project.
Of these, six corridors of around 105 km would be constructed by early 2010 to be ready for the Commonwealth Games.
The Ambedkar Nagar-Delhi Gate project, worth Rs 213 crore (Rs 2.13 billion), is expected to be completed by August 2008. The Delhi government is funding the entire project through internal accruals.
Delhi Integrated Mass Transport System, set up by the Delhi government, has been given the task of monitoring the progress of the corridor and giving regular feedback to the chief minister's office. The corridor would be maintained by DIMTS.
The other corridors scheduled to come up by 2010 are Jamia Milliah-Tilak Nagar (26.6 km), Moolchand-Jahangirpuri (27.7 km), Nizamuddin-Nand Nagari (17.1 km), Rajendra Nagar-Pragati Maidan (10.8 km), Shastri Park-Karawal Nagar (8.8 km) and Kundli-Gokulpuri (15.7 km).
The aim of these corridors is to encourage people to use public transport. For this, the corridors are being built in the middle of the existing roads, which are being widened.
The two-way high capacity bus corridor would be eight metres wide, which would leave very less space for general traffic and result in traffic jams, said a transport expert.
Officials say bus stands will be set up at every traffic junction to enable pedestrians to cross the road and reach the corridor to board the bus. This too, traffic analysts say, would not solve the problem of congestion.
The project was conceptualised by experts from IIT Delhi led by Prof Dinesh Mohan in 1996-97. In fact, other cities in the country, like Pune, Hyderabad and Indore are replicating the model.
According to sources, while 3.5 km of corridors have already been constructed in Pune, detailed project reports have been prepared for Hyderabad and Indore by the respective civic bodies.
The corridor is a part of government's efforts to ensure better-coordinated traffic, especially the movement of buses. The Delhi Transport Corporation has ordered 525 low-floor buses from Tata Motors of which 10 have been delivered.
DTC Chief Managing Director Anshu Prakash said DTC buses would run on these corridors as they formed a considerable part of the city's bus fleet.
