Bus Rapid Transit System in Asia - 81 in development and still counting

Sudhir Gota

but alas only few are ideal examples and majority being proposed as incomplete systems. The trend is towards incremental systems with the easily available funding being used for expanding the infrastructure.  Majority of Asian BRTS are being executed at less than 3 Million USD/km.

View BRTS Map in a larger map


Modeshift to BRTS has been  primarily from Bus and NMT i.e. 70% and only 30% from two wheelers, Cars and intermediate public transport systems. Majority of Cities are yet to utilize TDM strategies along with BRTS plans.

COMMUTER PAIN SURVEY – IS DRIVING PAINFUL?

Sudhir Gota

A latest report claims that Beijing has the worst traffic in the world. In this study, nearly 8,192 motorists in 20 cities on six continents were surveyed so as to find out if the traffic has gotten worse in past three years?  

The index suggested is comprised of 10 issues: 

1) commuting time, 

2) time stuck in traffic, 

agreement that: 3) price of gas is already too high, 4) traffic has gotten worse, 5) start-stop traffic is a problem, 6) driving causes stress, 7) driving causes anger, 8) traffic affects work, 9) traffic so bad driving stopped, and 10) decided not to make trip due to traffic. 

The cities scored as follows: Beijing: 99, Mexico City: 99, Johannesburg: 97, Moscow: 84, New Delhi: 81, Sao Paolo: 75, Milan: 52, Buenos Aires: 50, Madrid: 48, London: 36, Paris: 36, Toronto: 32, Amsterdam: 25, Los Angeles: 25, Berlin: 24, Montreal: 23, New York: 19, Houston: 17, Melbourne: 17, Stockholm: 15.

My reactions on the report

1. The problem with such indicators is that it looks at only motorized traffic ignoring the daily commute of people by non motorized modes of transportation. Commuting is not only driving and this makes this index a poor quantifier.  Look at the below graphic where we have captured trip mode shares of NMT users. Its nearly 1/3 total trips in the city even with poor data capturing.

2. “As for a reduction in travel stress, 36% of the respondents said that improved public transportation would help. Beijing topped the list here (65%), followed by Milan (57%), New Delhi (53%), Sao Paolo (52%), and Paris (51%).” – Reconfirms the fact that Public transportation is the key. 

3. “ When asked whether traffic had harmed their health in any way, 57% said yes. Among those who said it had, increased stress (30%) and anger (27%) were the primary manifestations. Increased stress was most prominent in Mexico City (56%), Sao Paolo (55%), New Delhi (45%), Buenos Aires (44%), and Beijing (40%), while anger prevailed in Beijing (53%), Moscow (51%), New Delhi (48%), and Mexico City (43%). All of these cities were among those identified in the survey as having especially painful commutes.” -  being forced to breathe polluted air is more critical than stress and anger as it has long term impact. 

4. “If their commuting time could be significantly reduced, 53% said they would spend more time with friends or family, 44% would devote themselves to more recreation, and 42% would spend more time exercising. And 16% said they would work more (multiple answers were allowed).” – This is critical as it may change the way we quantify travel time savings as normally we quantify travel time benefits by assuming that people would work based on times saved. I am more interested in knowing about travel time budgets and what purists would think of that based on current travel time of 2-4 hours/commuter/day?. The report claims that “The average delay was one hour – very similar to the figure for the U.S. alone in the previous two Commuter Pain surveys conducted by IBM.”

5. “When commuters cancelled a recent planned driving trip, the destination was work 24% of the time, recreation 22%, and shopping 21%.” -  was this really a loss?  One driving trip cancelled would have induced one additional trip in the system and did they use telecommuting? 

6. “Gas prices, notably in flux in recent years, appear to have a potential bearing on the willingness of commuters to drive to work. About a quarter of the respondents said that gas prices would have to rise by 20-30% for them to seriously consider other forms of transportation. A large proportion of the respondents (47%) thought that gas prices are already too high. Cities in which this feeling was particularly acute were Amsterdam and Madrid (66%) and Buenos Aires (64%). Cities in which it was relatively absent were New Delhi (24%), Moscow (31%), Los Angeles (36%), and Houston (39%) – perhaps suggesting that at least a modest rise in gas prices would not much affect traffic in those cities.”  -  Switch to which mode is the main factor? 

Driving being a pain may not be a valuable indictor for bad transportation. Sometimes it can be argued that driving being painful and stressful is a perfect recipe for success.   

Promoting Buses for a Day in Bangalore

Sudhir Gota

Many would be surprised to know that ‘Bangalore’ was one of the first in India to initiate a BRTS study.  In 1999, SIDA funded a feasibility project with a network of 20 corridors for bus routes comprising twin central rings intersected by 8 radial routes. However, authorities did not take any action on that report as the rolling stock / ‘buses’ were not being manufactured in the country and had to be imported from Volvo in Sweden thus increasing the cost of the project. After a decade of inaction, the next report advocating BRTS in Bangalore was the CTTP (2007) report (Transport Master Plan) which suggested nearly 300 km of BRTS along 14 corridors. The solution was supposed to cost only 2.7 Million USD/Km.  A team of Indian consultants prepared the detailed project report and submitted it back to the government in 2009. Latest reports suggest that authorities are still struggling to get the funding in place and the project may be delayed yet again.

In the midst of all this delay, it is interesting as a government backed report in 2003 recommended – ‘60% modal targets’. Setting modal targets and devising a strategy is the trend being followed with cities like Singapore – setting 70% public transport mode share by 2020, HCMC – 50% by 2020, Beijing – 45% trips to downtown areas by 2015.

The committee report recommended -

“It must be emphasised that the BMTC should use an external benchmark to gauge its progress on the providing improved connectivity. We recommend that the BMTC set a target of capturing 60% of all journeys by 2006 up from 50% currently. This would require increasing ridership and capacity by approximately 15% every year (compared to 10% currently).”

To increase the ridership, within a decade the BMTC (bus operator in Bangalore) innovated from destination based bus system to Grid system by rapidly expanding the fleet. BMTC was also first to initiate information systems such as SMS based alert system on the exact location of the buses. However, the system was disbanded within a short period of time without any reasons being specified.

 BMTC was also the first one to use JNNURM to fund its terminals.  BMTC is planning to construct 45 and Transit Management Centers (TTMCs) around Bangalore.

In 2010, to popularize the concept of bus travel, BMTC with several stakeholders unleashed the concept of “Bus Day”. It's a full day event where people are requested to travel on buses.  Bus day is conducted on 4th of every month. Travelling in buses is celebrated for a day.  Transport Minister and the Mayor make use of buses in their daily commute. The views of media and people are mixed. Some reports claimed that additional 10,000 people used buses with decrease in 10-15% private vehicles on roads but some reports claimed empty buses making the trips. Succeeding months have showed decrease in promotional intensity. The data from mobile vans of pollution control board at different locations indicates very slight reduction in air pollution which is suffocating and killing people in Bangalore. Please note the concentration of RSPM – which according to Indian laws is tolerable only uptil 60 µg/m3 crosses 250 at some places.

 

Are the proposed measures effective?

The statistics show constant reduction in bus trip mode share: 60.19% in 1994 (ILFS); 48.91% in 2002 (RITES); and 35% in 2008 (MOUD). Meanwhile, the 2-wheeler ownership motorization levels (2-wheelers per 1000 people) increased from 124 in 1995 to 247 in 2005.

To combat decrease in share, Bangalore doubled the number of buses in 7 years (2001-2007) but at the same time, owing to the growth in city size, the average trip length increased by 2.5km and per capita energy consumption increased from 3.59 Megajoules/Day (MJ/day) to 9.67 MJ/day. Thus it has been estimated that even if the trip mode share of Bangalore does not change, by 2025 the per capita energy consumption would increase to 15 MJ/day!

Clearly, increasing the buses and providing intermediate solutions will not provide results.  What makes BMTC a very interesting case study is that it has a fleet of nearly 6082 buses, which makes nearly 79150 trips carrying around 4 million passengers daily within a radius of 25 km from the city center, with 1.3 million service kilometers. The high pressure on the existing BMTC network is quite evident from the fact that the loading per trip is nearly 51 passengers. Each bus makes nearly 13 daily trips with an average trip length of 16km indicating high stress on drivers as they drive to congested traffic (210 km/day). The journey speed by buses for the major part of the day is only 15-18 kmph. Only 22% of bus stops are sheltered and often the complaint is that the buses do not stop at shelters thereby making them useful only for advertisement. Institutional issues reflect here as the bus stops are sheltered by a different agency and not the bus operating agency thereby creating conflicts. Over 60% of people actually walk to bus stations to access buses. Sometimes, bus commuters spend over 60% of time outside the bus rather than inside and this is an important factor. Without improving the access one cannot guarantee ridership. Accesses to bus stops are again under different institutions and this again creates a bottleneck.

It’s clear that just increasing the number of buses without improving the overall public transport system and integrating other modes is not enough. Public transport ridership will continue to decline unless city planners adopt innovative approach to retain the bus ridership.  Trips would always switch modes depending on quality of service. Celebrating bus travel and providing incentives with faster travel and better access throughout the year is a way to go. One day concepts would not make much of a difference!!

LDV EMISSION STANDARDS IN ASIA – FAQ’s in Asia

Sudhir Gota

1. Can only rich countries afford to clean fuels?

Stringent emission standards do not depend on economic growth. Countries like India are switching over to EURO-4 at a low GDP/Capita of 1000$. This is significant as it debunks any theory that suggests that only rich countries can afford to consume clean fuels. Investigations suggest that the incremental costs of meeting the recommended level of fuel sulfur in Asia average 0.2–0.8 US cents per liter for gasoline and 0.5–0.8 US cents per liter for diesel. Latest reports from India suggest an increase of only 1 US cents per liter of gasoline and 0.6 US cents for diesel to shift from Euro-3 to Euro-4 fuels.

Notes – NP- Nepal, PRC-China, EU- European Union (average values), HK- Hong Kong, VN – VietNam, PH- Philippines, PK-Pakistan, IN – India, ID – Indonesia, SK – South Korea, TH- Thailand, MY- Malaysia, BD – Bangaldesh, SG – Singapore. 1,2,3,4 – indicates Euro standards 1,2,3,4 etc.

2. Can we leapfrog intermediate emission standards like EURO-III?

Many Asian countries have learnt the lesson of making faster evolution. Countries like India and China have made quick strides in getting more efficient vehicles on the roads and making the fuel cleaner. Within a decade they have progressed from standards 1 to 2 then3 and finally 4. Other Asian countries which have been slow can chart a different course and in fact can leapfrog as Philippines and VietNam intend to do. The solution lies in getting all the stakeholders to agree on a roadmap. The faster one sets the target and provides legal backing, better the chances of implementation as vehicles last for 15 years on an average.

3. Why it is important to clean up the fleet early?

Asian countries have a greater chance of cleaning the fleet as the motorization index is still low. The following table indicates that the Asian countries have initiated steps at an early stage thus ensuring introduction of better vehicles. Indonesia, Srilanka and Pakistan needs to make concrete plans for EURO-4 before the fleet starts accumulating on roads. Slow implementation would increase the fleet before effective measures are put in place for example – Thailand and Malaysia.

4. Can improving only LDV’s guarantee success?

Improving LDV’s is not the silver bullet. It’s only a part of solution. Majority of the Asian fleet is dominated by Non-LDV vehicles and the trend would remain the same even with high LDV growth rates. Vehicles like two wheelers and trucks need similar attention. Approximately only 30% of the fleet is composed of LDV’s.

% of LDV’s in the total fleet

In spite of rapid evolution in standards in some of the countries, majority of Asian cities have not yet ensured clean air. One of the main reasons for this is the inefficient management of in-use vehicles. Inspection and Maintenance is as important as cleaning future vehicles. This aspect has been neglected by the authorities thus allowing proliferation of old polluting vehicles.

5. Why Demand management measures are equally important?

The tail pipe policies need to be complemented by Non-tail pipe measures such as demand management measures. Singapore is an ideal example which does not have very stringent emission standards for new vehicles, but has effective vehicle ownership, usage control and good inspection and maintenance for pollution control of in use vehicles. This ensures better air quality.

6. How are countries accessing roadblocks in implementation?

Countries are trying to clean diesel faster than gasoline (example – Singapore), big cities faster than small cities (example – India and China). This is a very interesting development as it offers incentives and allows stakeholders to assess roadblocks in progression. The industry also has time to adjust to the changing fleet specifications. Contrary to the trend, Bangladesh and Pakistan are trying to clean gasoline faster than diesel.

7. Why target Fuel subsidies?

Translating quicker progression lies in removing fuel subsidies. Countries like Malaysia and Indonesia shell out 2.6-2.7% of GDP to provide artificial low cost fuels. This acts as a disincentive for refineries to pledge more support for cleaner fuels. It is to be noted that subsidized fuels cannot be considered as the service policy of the country but a product which is optimally priced.

8. Why Link Fuel Economy with Vehicle Emission Standards?

Fuel Economy- Vehicle Emission Standards – linking these two measures requires a new approach and it has the potential to provide huge benefits to the society. Currently countries are charting out different strategies rather than thinking of a modality to benefit from both by uniform application. Most often the institutions working out both the policies are nearly the same and thus two issues can be combined to maximize benefits by early implementation. For example, concept of Eco Cars in Thailand -– An Eco car meets minimum pollution standards of EURO4 or higher, emitting no more than 120 g CO2/km. To promote the sales of fuel efficient cars, the Ministry of Finance put in place a tax incen¬tive scheme which reduces the excise tax rate on standard passenger cars that meet fuel-efficiency criteria, and qualify as so-called “eco cars.” . Similar integrated system exists in Japan.

The other reason for linking these two standards is the impact of vehicle emission standards in reducing “Black Carbon”. Experts believe that reducing black carbon (BC) offers biggest impact on immediate climate mitigation. Black carbon is formed through the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuel, and biomass and switching to stringent emission standards can reduce the BC emissions.

Some Solutions to Reduce Emissions from Transport Lie outside Our Cities – Case Study of India

Sudhir Gota

Developing countries are at a crossroads as current decisions and investments in the transport sector are set to lock-in GHG (CO₂) and air pollutant emissions for the next decades. There is reason for concern as sustainable transport policies that incorporate air quality and climate change are being developed and implemented at a slow pace, risking irreversible damage to the environment and people’s welfare. This is further aggravated by the global economic recession, which has lead to economic stimulus packages in developed countries for roads, the automotive industry, and related transport infrastructure. If developing countries follow this lead by prioritizing vehicles instead of people, it is certain that CO₂ emissions, air pollution, congestion, and other transport related problems will worsen.

It has been analyzed that, based on a business-as-usual scenario for motorization in India, the main trends from 2005 to 2025 are:

· The number of total vehicles would grow at 8.70% per year, an increase from 49 million to 246 million between 2005 and 2025.

· CO₂ emissions from road transport would increase at 7.75% per year, which is higher than many other Asian countries, from 203 million tons in 2005 to 905 million tons by 2025. Passenger transport represents 45% and freight transport represents 55% of total CO₂ emissions from road transport in 2005; this ratio would remain approximately the same in 2025.

· PM emissions from road transport would decline until 2025 by 1.88% per year due to the adoption of stricter fuel and vehicle emission standards, while NO_x emissions would increase at a rate of 2.37% per year. However, PM emissions would subsequently rise again due to the continued rapid vehicle growth, especially if emissions standards are not further tightened (Euro IV and above).

· Only about 22% of total CO₂ emissions from land passenger transport in India are attributed to intracity movement in these 29 cities. It is probable that the remaining 78% of CO₂ emissions come from other 498 cities (India has a total of 527 cities with over 100,000 people but limited data are available) and movement of passengers and freight from one city to another (intercity transport).

• If the current city trip mode share is retained, CO₂ emissions would increase 2- or 3-fold between 2008 and 2025, due to a rapid growth in urban population and in the number of trips.
• If the cities are able to increase the current non-motorized transport (NMT) and public transport trip shares by 5% each with a reduction in motorized transport share, the CO₂ emissions in 2008 would reduce by 9.16% and 6.21%.

A simple sketch analysis of intercity transport contribution to India’s total CO₂ emissions from road transport indicates that a 442 km stretch of 4-lane national highway may approximately correspond to the total passenger transport emissions from intracity movement in Bangalore. Similarly, CO₂ emissions from intracity passenger transport in Delhi are comparable to a 772 km stretch of highway.

The high emission from traffic in National Highways needs to be tackled by the government to reduce the environmental impact. The reason for relatively high emissions from national highways is that freight transport dominates the highways (52% of the vehicle mode share) whereas 2- and 3-wheelers are more present on typical urban roads (about 40% of vehicle mode share). Because 2- and 3-wheelers are more fuel efficient and emit less CO2 than larger vehicles, emissions from urban road transport are relatively lower compared to highways. A second reason could be high empty truck movements due to inefficiencies in freight logistics. Nearly 88% of the truck fleet is under unorganized operators.

Key recommendations for government and stakeholders are as follows:

1. Policies and projects should have a stronger focus on making cities livable and accessible for people, rather than on just improving the flow of vehicles in cities, by integrating transport demand management (i.e. reducing the number of trips made and distances traveled), public transport, and non-motorized transport into urban development and transport policies.
2. Policies and projects should aim to reduce CO₂ and air pollutant emissions from the outset, thus creating a low carbon and emission transport system, rather than adding emission mitigating measures to transport policies and projects after they have been designed. Land use and urban planning is critical in influencing transport demand and behavior thereby reducing the emissions thus improving the health.
3. Indian cities are not maximizing the density influence to reduce the emissions. Many cities which are dense are showing high emissions because of insufficient public transport and high influx of private vehicles. Many Transit oriented development initiatives are being taken by city governments, but much remains to be done on land use-transport-environment integration.
4. The National Highways carry a huge amount of traffic. Considering high emissions from road based mode of transportation, the government needs to revise feasibility and environmental impact assessment (EIA) guidelines to include emission quantification and mitigation measures in the selection of projects.
5. Urgent attention is needed for freight transport, which currently contributes to 55% of road transport CO₂ emissions. Most freight vehicles use diesel fuel which contributes to relatively high PM emissions and black carbon (“soot”), which in addition to being an air pollutant is considered a major contributor to global warming. Both urban transport and freight transport should receive equal attention.

India Transport Emissions – 2007 – Quantifying emissions without reliable data

Sudhir Gota

You simply cannot generate reliable emission estimates without accurate data. In fact, I would not hesitate to claim that “Without reliable data, transport emissions forecasting is as good as “fortune telling””. You need to consider the numbers with a pinch of salt or many a times consider the estimates as only numbers!

The reason why I am coming up with such an argument is because yesterday India released its 2007 Green House Gas inventory. I think it has some big problems with the transport estimates. It claims that the “road transport sector emitted 123.55 million tons of CO2e, which is 87% of the total emissions from the transport sector”. The transport sector emissions include all GHG emissions from road transport, railways, aviation and navigation. It suggests that “the total number of registered vehicles in the country has increased from 5.4 million in 1981 to 99.6 million in 2007. Two wheelers and cars constitute nearly 88% of the total vehicles at the national level”.

The problem with the total numbers of vehicles in India is that registered vehicles cannot be used for estimates as we don’t have active scrappage/renewal system. Not many people have an idea as to how to guess the number of vehicles on road. Even the activity information (vehicle travel/year in km) is not available on public domain and often people borrow the numbers from some isolated studies and from other countries or other researchers.

In order to highlight the data issues, following are some of the critical issues

1. Vehicles

a. No breakdown by mode type and engine technology (e.g. Euro 1 or Euro 2 compliant, etc.)

b. limited data on active vehicle fleet

c. No data on splitting small cars with big cars, MUV’s, LCV’s

d. Isolated surveys to determine age of the vehicles

2. Fuels

a. No fuel split available - gasoline, diesel, alternative fuel

3. Activity

a. No data on urban vs rural share of movement

b. Occupancy – how many people/load

c. Annual surveys and proper methodologies on vehicle-km travelled, passenger-km travelled, and tonnes-km rarely exist

d. Reasonable data on fuel consumption per km travelled on various transport modes. This issue is critical as quoted values from lab testing differs from actual on road values

4. Emission factors

a. lack of locally representative emission factors for existing vehicle fleet

Coming back on the India’s 2007 estimate of 123 million tons in 2007 for an activity information of 99 million vehicles is too low as seen from the below graphic. In fact the estimates of CO₂ /vehicles is lesser (1.2) than what researchers have quantified for passenger transport (ratio of 1.5 for passenger vehicles. Including commercial vehicles in estimation would expand this figure to a range of 2 to 4).

Strangely, the same authors, in an earlier study had quantified 106 million tons in 2000 with 48 million vehicles. Then why is that the doubling of vehicle numbers not showing impact?

One thing that hits hard in the below graphic is the huge variation of CO₂ and vehicles. It seems that researchers do not agree with each other … a classic case of elephant and the blind men !!

CO2 EMISSIONS FROM RAILWAYS – USE OF EMISSION FACTORS

Sudhir Gota

Quantifying emissions from Railways (including LRT/MRT) is really tricky. Some of the variables which often trouble analysts are – use of construction, technology and occupancy factors which can make or break an analysis. Last year, Mikhail Chester brought forward a very interesting analysis on complete carbon footprint of transport modes and this study was critically accepted. The study provided a comprehensive environmental life-cycle assessment of not only vehicle and fuel components but also infrastructure components for automobiles, buses, commuter rail systems and aircraft. Many processes were included for vehicles (manufacturing, active operation, inactive operation, maintenance, insurance), infrastructure (construction, operation, maintenance, parking, insurance), and fuels (production, distribution). The vehicles inventoried in the study were sedans, pickups, SUVs, urban diesel buses, light rail, heavy rail and aircraft.

The important argument made by Chester was that one needs to closely look at the occupancy of Rails and its built infrastructure which often tip the scales. But, more often researchers think that one can always borrow the emission factors from different sources and this would provide some estimates of reasonable accuracy. This is a myth.

In order to demolish the argument of usage of common emission factor, we summarize many of the emission factors [1]available online. The data collation was further helped by inputs from ADB-TA - Reducing Carbon Emissions from Transport Projects.

It is to be noted that emission factors have been quantified using different methodologies with different boundaries. What sets them apart is the huge variation. The variation is between 16 to 1200 g/pkm. The Asian MRT’s which have very high occupancy ratios have values between 20 to 110 g/pkm. Segregating heavy rails, MRT and LRT may help in refining this further. However, it is to be noted that emission factors cannot be constant but dynamic with time in order to reflect changes in design, occupancy and other factors.

Thus, one cannot borrow the emission factor straight away. What one should do is to measure the fuel/electricity consumption to derive emissions. There is no easy way out.

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[1] Please send us a request in case you would like to access the sources.