Around 2,500 buses have broken down on the roads of Delhi bringing traffic to a halt for a total of over 3,000 hours this year. It translates to over 126 days of crawling traffic on the city roads when commuters were stuck just because of breakdown of these public transport vehicles. Then it is no wonder that most of the traffic alerts issued by the Delhi Traffic Police specify breakdown of buses as the reason for traffic snarls (two such alerts just while this report was being filed).
According to the Delhi Traffic Police, 2,333 buses broke down on the roads of the city till October 5 this year. The figure includes buses run by DTC as well as cluster buses that are operated by Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS).
At least four buses broke down on Tuesday holding up the traffic at laxmi Nagar, ISBT Kashmiri Gate, Chirag Delhi and Naraina. Areas around ITO, Tiz Hazari, laxmi Nagar, Naraina (towards Dhaula Kuan), ISBT, Ring Road (Nehru Place towards Sheikh Sarai) etc were affected due to the same.
According to traffic officials, it takes around one hour and eighteen minutes on an average to remove a low-floor or semi-low-floor bus, a long time during which traffic crawls on the road as major road space is occupied by the static malfunctioned vehicle. "Since the vehicles have to go around the malfunctioned bus, it creates a long trail of vehicles behind it. While we can easily remove other large and small vehicles in case of a breakdown, these buses are equipped with hydraulic brakes which automatically get locked in case of any malfunction. So in case of these buses, we have to call the transport officials to aid the removal of the bus from the road which takes a lot of time," said a senior traffic police official.
While DTC officials said that they conducted a training exercise for the traffic police officials so that they can easily remove the buses from the road, the exercise has been fruitless so far.
The traffic police official also added that in case of a breakdown, drivers don't display any indication like blinking lights or triangular hazard signs to caution the approaching vehicles coming from behind, which can lead to accidents at dark spots.