Over 600 interstate buses to be diverted from Delhi’s Kashmere Gate ISBT | Latest News Delhi - Hindustan Times
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Over 600 interstate buses to be diverted from Delhi’s Kashmere Gate ISBT

Hindustan Times | By, New Delhi
Feb 28, 2017 11:06 AM IST

To curb air pollution and decongest areas around Kashmere Gate, the Delhi government has planned to shed the load of Kashmere Gate ISBT by almost 36%. 673 inter-state buses from Kashmere Gate ISBT will be diverted to Anand Vihar and Sarai Kale Khan ISBTs.

To curb air pollution and decongest areas around Kashmere Gate, the Delhi government has planned to shed the load of Kashmere Gate ISBT by almost 36%.

Traffic jam at ISBT Anand Vihar Bus terminal. Experts expressed their concerns that the move would make Anand Vihar more polluted.(Sonu Mehta/ HT file photo)
Traffic jam at ISBT Anand Vihar Bus terminal. Experts expressed their concerns that the move would make Anand Vihar more polluted.(Sonu Mehta/ HT file photo)

A week after lieutenant governor Anil Baijal directed chief secretary MM Kutty to look into “rationalising” locations of bus depots for inter-state buses in the city, the transport department and the traffic police have come up with a proposal to divert 673 inter-state buses from Kashmere Gate ISBT to Anand Vihar and Sarai Kale Khan ISBTs.

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The move is going to impact nearly 30,000 daily passengers.

Plan to decongest Kashmere Gate
Plan to decongest Kashmere Gate

“We plan to do this because most buses coming from neighbouring states are old diesel buses that are highly polluting. Since vehicular emission is a major contributor to local air quality, pushing these polluting buses to the city’s periphery would help improve the situation,” a transport department official said.

According to the proposal, buses that come from Western UP towns like Muzzafarnagar, Shamli, Saharanpur, Meerut, Bijnor, and Uttarakhand towns like Kotdwar, Rishikesh, Haridwar and Dehradun, will be diverted to Anand Vihar terminal.

While 563 buses that take the Shahdara route will be diverted to Anand Vihar, 110 buses of Haryana and Rajasthan Roadways will be shifted to the Sarai Kale Khan terminal. However, all other buses that operate from the Chandigarh side shall continue to enter the Kashmere Gate ISBT.

“Most of these buses, especially those that take the Shahdara route should ideally come to Anand Vihar. But, they continue to come to Kashmere Gate as it is most centrally-located out of all three ISBTs,” another official explained.

Explaining how the plan would decongest the area, Garima Bhatnagar, joint commissioner of police (traffic) said, “If the proposal gets a go ahead then it would unclog the Kashmere Gate flyover, Ring Road, the road that goes towards Tis Hazari, Civil Lines and even the road to Old Delhi. Besides, it would lead to reduction in footfall which would mean presence of fewer hawkers and inter-mediate public transport (IPTs) like auto rickshaws and so on that are now clogging the roads.”

She added that the timings of departure and arrival of these buses are clubbed which add to the chaos during peak hours. “Changing the engineering of the road is not possible to clear the bottleneck around Kashmere Gate because of its proximity to monuments like the Red Fort, Salimgarh Fort and so on. So, this could help. We are going to have a meeting on this again in a day or two,” Bhatnagar said.

Experts, however, expressed their concerns that it would only make Anand Vihar more polluted.

“This will help to decongest. But, Anand Vihar is a pollution hotspot in Delhi. Developing new terminal areas with good connectivity for seamless transfers to local and cleaner transport systems can be considered,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director at Centre for Science and Environment.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Sweta Goswami writes on politics, urban development, transportation, energy and social welfare. Based in Delhi, she tracks government policies and suggests corrections based on public feedback and on-ground implementation through her reports. She has also covered the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) since its inception.

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