Myopic cost-savings are not the only objective. Had we wanted an efficient BRTS for Delhi, we would have been better off with a BRTS that cost Rs 100 crore per km than Rs 10 crore per km. By opting for Rs 10 crore per km, we opted for chaos.

There is another lesson that can be teased out of the cross-country experience. If some degree of green-field urban planning is possible (Curitiba, Bogota, Ottawa), the natural choice is the BRTS. The BRTS is also the natural choice in cities that have population sizes smaller than 1 million, or perhaps 5 million in the Indian context. It would probably have worked in Gurgaon or Faridabad and should work in Indore, Jaipur, Visakhapatnam and Bhopal. Ahmedabad and Pune are probably “maybes”. But the prerequisites don’t seem to exist for the heart of Delhi. The NCR hinterland is a different matter, with the BRTS implemented as a feeder network for the MRTS in the heart. One doesn’t have to be a skilled urban planner to appreciate this and much of it is plain common sense. The 5.8 km stretch for Ambedkar Nagar to Moolchand was an unnecessarily expensive experiment driven largely by dogma, and expense doesn’t mean monetary costs alone. Why did one have to pick a corridor with such a lot of bicycle and pedestrian traffic? Quoted out of context, T.S. Eliot said, “A thousand policemen directing traffic cannot tell you why you come or where you go.”

The writer is a noted economist bdebroy@gmail.com