New Delhi: Delhi`s much-criticised Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which all its political parties agree should be scrapped, can solve its traffic woes and reduce road accidents, if extended all over the city, Dinesh Mohan, an IIT professor and one of India`s acknowledged transport experts, said.
Delivering a talk on `Accidents, mythologies and science of traffic safety` at the India International Centre here on Friday evening, Mohan said the 5.7 km long BRT corridor in South Delhi was better than the one in Ahmedabad and should not be scrapped.
"If the Delhi Metro was built on a stretch of a few kilometres only, would it have been successful? The BRT has to be extended all over the city to segregate traffic and only then will people realise its worth," Mohan told a news agency.
"There is no problem with the design and in fact it`s better than Ahmedabad," added the Volvo Chair Professor Emeritus at IIT Delhi.
According to Mohan, an uninformed campaign by vested interests, media organisations and senior government officials resulted in the BRT project not taking off in the national capital.
When asked about the traffic snarls on the stretch, Mohan said the snarls were not limited to just the BRT corridor and took place "everywhere in the city during peak hours”.
The BRT has remained a controversy`s child ever since its inception in 2008. Following the initial South Delhi corridor, a court case sealed the fate of the project and construction of 14 similar corridors was put on hold.
The Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) has said that commuters would benefit if the BRT was scrapped. Delhi`s previous chief minister, Sheila Dikshit, who was a strong votary of the project, had finally acknowledged its problems during the election campaign and said it would be scrapped despite crores of public money being spent on building it.
