Corridor of certainty: BRT opens May

The much-delayed Bus Rapid Transit corridor between Ambedkar Nagar and Moolchand Hospital will finally open on May 1, reports Atul Mathur.

It’s official. The much-delayed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor

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between Ambedkar Nagar and Moolchand Hospital, will finally open on May 1. The Delhi government has decided to launch a trial run April 22 onward.

Transport minister Haroon Yusuf finalised the dates in a meeting on Tuesday attended by all stakeholders. These include representatives of the Delhi Integrated Multi Modal Transit System (DIMTS), the city transport department, RITES, Delhi Police besides experts from IIT, Delhi, Geetam Tiwari and Dinesh Mohan.

“All buses — including low-floor, Blueline, chartered and school buses — will run in the corridor. With the traffic police, we will try and implement lane driving,” a transport department official said. Apart from the traffic police, the transport department will also deploy 25 personnel on the 5.6-kilometre stretch.

Transport department officials said the government wants to make the pilot phase operational at the earliest. Loose ends will be ironed out during the trial run. These include, the official said, making the cycle and pedestrian tracks free of encroachment and debris and ensuring continuous power supply to streetlights. DIMTS will carry out mock drills on the vehicle recovery system in case there is a breakdown, an official said.