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CONNECT DELHI

CONNECT DELHI

Rationalisation of Bus Routes and Feeder Services in Delhi

Delhi has a substantial public transport infrastructure; however, the issues related to accessibility and availability still persist, owing to the fact that historically, transport in Delhi has always been disjointed. Several organisations such as the DTC, DMRC, Transport Department GNCTD, Delhi Traffic Police, etc are involved in managing and operating the Delhi transport system.

The Government of NCT of Delhi envisions bringing all these organisations together and developing an integrated route rationalisation plan for public transport in Delhi. The Transport Department GNCTD, based on a study carried out by DIMTS (Delhi Integrated MultiModal Transit System Ltd.), and with support from the Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi (DDC) and WRI India, launched Connect Delhi, an initiative to Rationalise Bus Routes and Feeder Services in Delhi. This initiative would improve the quality and efficiency of public transport, tackle the neglected areas of feeder services and hence make public transport conveniently accessible to all. The initiative was launched by Shri Kailash Gahlot, Hon'ble Minister for Transport as part of a Workshop on Route Rationalisation on 4 July 2018.

 

Prior to the launch of Connect Delhi, DIMTS undertook a comprehensive study of the existing bus routes and feeder services, identified the parallel services on the same route and quantified them in terms of trips and route lengths and developed a route rationale. The rationale of the route developed was based on the travel demand, passenger load and income efficiency of the route. It was observed that overlapping routes with other feeder services were one of the major issues, which resulted in the under-utilisation of existing services and reduced efficiency of services in peak hour conditions wherein most services will be competing with each other.

Based on the study, a bus route network with a hub-and-spoke model was proposed for Delhi. The city was identified with various levels of HUBs: CBD, Zonal and sub-Zonal connected through CBD circulator routes, trunk routes, primary routes and village connectivity routes. It was proposed that in Delhi we have a Bus network with:

  • Trunk routes, connecting all zonal hubs in Delhi, that have services at a 5-minute frequency;
     
  • Zonal hubs shall be areas that are most frequented by people for work, recreation or even interchange purposes;
     
  • The trunk routes shall be fed by Primary routes running at less than 15 minutes frequency;
     
  • The Primary routes shall be fed by village connectivity routes (Feeder services) running at less than 20 minutes frequency;
     
  • The Village connectivity routes shall be serviced by existing feeder services.
     

It was suggested that such a hierarchical system would help increase the efficiency as well as outreach of the bus transport network. Over and above this CBD circulator routes shall be run connecting all CBD Hubs in Delhi.

Pilot In Najafgarh

The implementation of a small-scale pilot of the initiative started in Najafgarh in November 2018 to derive learnings on possible implementation issues and create an efficient monitoring system for the routes. The pilot consisted of 17 routes connecting Najafgarh. A total of 285 buses were deployed on these routes, which consisted of 3 trunk routes, 4 primary routes and 10 village connectivity routes.

Key Observations

After four months of daily monitoring, the routes were launched officially on 23rd February 2019. DDC worked closely with WRI India, DTC and DIMTS for monitoring the performance of bus routes in terms of schedule adherence and completion of the target number of trips. The monitoring system developed continued to track the performance of bus routes until October 2019.

The following key observations emerged:

  • The routes had better frequency owing to the additional leet received;
     
  • With the addition of a new leet, the ticket sales actually went up many folds, in comparison to November 2018;
     
  • Between January 2019 to September 2019, all routes showed a substantial increase in ticket sales and ridership, leading to increased earnings per km;
     
  • Despite high demand and better frequencies, the bus services were not reliable, and an increase in Missed Trips proven and the number of missed kilometres was noted;
     
  • 50-60% of these missed trips were due to breakdowns, 20% due to traffic congestion and 10% because of unavailability of driver or conductor.

Key Recommendations

Based on the experiences of the pilot carried out in Najafgagh, DDC made the following recommendations for implementing future phases of the Connect Delhi initiative for the rationalisation of bus routes and feeder services in Delhi.

  • A dedicated team should be set up, which would monitor routes implemented and regularly meet operators to address on-ground operational issues.
     
  • An automated system to monitor the bus route performance should be developed that informs further action.
     
  • Feeder routes were found to be complementary to the primary and trunk route; and should be retained for the effective implementation of the project.
     
  • The ticket data as well as the scheduling of buses which is relevant to the performance analysis of the route must be made easily accessible to implementation agencies.
     
  • Fare integration of all public transport services and Fare Capping in buses must be implemented to give full effect to the initiative.
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