Chief Minister Narendra Modi announced this after inaugurating the Asia BRTS (Bus Rapid Transit System) Conference here on Thursday.

He said the success of BRTS in Gujarat was noticed only after the failure of the transport system in Delhi came to light. “Where Delhi fails, Gujarat succeeds,” he said making a tongue-in-cheek observation.

Modi lamented at being questioned for spending heavily on facilities meant for the poor. He said every scheme like BRTS, Jyotigram and 108 ambulance reflected the government concern for the poor.

He said growing number of vehicles and population increasing at a rapid pace coupled with fuel crisis posed a big challenge of ensuring a well integrated and holistic approach to urban management and urban transportation, the alternative to which could be chaos. No piecemeal approach will do in this, he warned.

The CM said his government would launch a ferry service for people and luggage using the sea route between Dahej and Ghogha. He also announced use of the Narmada canal for ferry service and launch of metro rail projects for Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat with resource pool.

I P Gautam, principal secretary (urban development), said the next dots on the state’s BRT map would be Surat and Rajkot.

BRTS meet: ‘Innovation’ takes centrestage on Day I

When buses pull up to Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) platforms in Guangzhou, China, a plank slides out from under the door like a computer's CD drive and closes the gap between bus and platform. After passengers have gotten off and on, the doors close, the plank slides back in and the bus moves on.

This simple maneuver has not only solved safety and accessibility problems faced by hundreds of wheel-chaired, elderly or very young commuters, it also signifies just one of many innovations accompanying the public transport system that has invaded 3,500 kms of urban roads in Latin America, North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

In perspective, Ahmedabad's 45 km BRTS corridor, which carries 1.3 lakh commuters daily, makes up just 1.2 per cent of that entire length. Nevertheless, this city's planned elevated BRT corridor through the walled-city is one of numerous innovations in a transport system that one of its principal proponents, Dario Hidalgo from Colombia, which pioneered BRT in its capital Bogota, defines as a system based on flexibility.

At the three-day Asia BRTS Conference that kicked off here on Thursday, the Asian Development Bank's LLoyd Wright told delegates that in Eugene, Oregon (USA), BRT lanes are split into narrow parallel lanes (each just over a metre wide) by a strip of grass just short enough to not brush against the bus’ underside. This serves two purposes — one, it saves money since concrete consumes about half of a BRT system's total cost and two, the grass actually cuts up to 40 per cent of vehicular noise.

In Cambridge in England, bollards automatically rise from the BRT lanes after buses pass through, preventing mixed traffic from entering the lanes and help enforce the lanes' sanctity.

In other cities across Latin America, where as many as 19 cities in eight countries have BRT systems, authorities have begun plying tram-like buses. Elsewhere, buses are so long as to need almost a dozen wheels. In yet other cities, buses are small and hardly stretch 12 metres — in fact, Ahmedabad’s BRT guru Shivanand Swamy said two small buses, each 2.3 metres wide, passed smoothly inside a 5.5 metre wide BRT corridor at a trial conducted just a few days ago.

This experimentation with infrastructure and size across the globe has been necessitated by various things; in urban areas that can afford to dedicate large swathes of road for BRT lanes, big buses can carry more passengers but, conversely, in inner cities where roads are narrow and BRT lanes can be only so big, small buses can maneuver easily. The use of smaller buses is an experiment Swamy said is going to be tried in Surat, where lanes are to be built in the narrow, crowded inner city nearby the railway station.