CTU reworks routes to make your travel comfy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 5

To make travel by CTU buses easy and comfortable on local routes, the Chandigarh Administration today announced to run buses on horizontal and vertical routes from April 1. In withdrawal from the existing practice of having alphabetical and numerical bus route numbers, numerical numbers from 1 to 31 are being allocated to each route.

The Secretary, Transport, Bhawna Garg, said based on a feedback from commuters and surveys conducted by a traffic team of the CTU, the UT had come to the conclusion that simpler and easy-to-remember straight routes with an increased frequency were among the solutions for a better urban transport model. It had now been ensured that a commuter does not have to shift more than one bus on routes that earlier required change of more buses.

Instead of having 70 tricity and sub-urban routes, the routes have been reduced to 31 (23 tricity and eight suburban) with a frequency of 10 minutes. Nine years ago, the CTU had introduced the grid system and later started running a "point-to-point service".

The Secretary said in view of the increasing demand from commuters from the neighbouring urban and sub-urban areas such as Zirakpur, Landran and Kharar, more buses were being designated on these routes so that the load of private vehicles on city roads could come down. “The CTU would also go in for rationalisation of the fare structure,” she said.

The proposed bus routes had been worked out based on the scientific principle of the “Horizontal and Vertical Linear Structures” model connecting all major hubs of the tricity.  There would be nine vertical routes, running from northern to southern sectors, and 12 horizontal routes, running from west to east. Routes numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 12 would run through markets. Beginning Monday, the CTU field staff would undertake a publicity drive to seek public opinion. The Secretary said 270 buses would be required to run the service at a frequency of 10 minutes on the 31 routes.

A list of the final routes and pictorial representation on one map  was being shared for public information and suggestions/feedback was being sought from public through email id: [email protected] and [email protected].