A third-party monitoring team from Delhi was in the state capital for the last two days to inspect the construction work on the 24-km long Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) corridor in Bhopal.

Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) chief engineer (in-charge BRTS project) Sunil Shrivastava told HT that the three-member team, headed by consultant Somnath Gupta, inspected the work on the corridor on various points and took some samples. "They were here for two days and left on Saturday evening. They will later send their report to the Centre based on which the government will decide on further funding of the project and release of the pending installments," he said, adding that since the project began the third-party inspection has already been conducted four to five times.

According to BRTS experts, more than 100 parameters are involved in BRTS design. Approximately one- third of the parameters are related to site conditions and hence fixed. The remaining parameters are variable and depend on design. However, confusion exists on several design features like whether to have dedicated lanes in the middle of the road or on the sides, location of stations, and distance of station platform from the road intersection, height of the station platform and the bus floor and signal cycle phasing.

BRTS is a bus-based transit system which allows higher speed, capacity and safety of buses by segregating them from other traffic on a roadway.

According to experts, over 150 cities in the world now operate BRTS corridors and no two systems are identical; their characteristics vary. A BRTS is custom built to the needs of the city. In India the BRTS is being developed in over 11 Indian cities.