The Rs 600-crore Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) has finally reached the end of the road. Nearly a decade after it was launched, the Punjab Government has decided to remove its dedicated bus corridor here. Amritsar West MLA Jasbir Singh Sandhu announced that approval had been granted to dismantle the corridor, signalling the end of the Metro Bus project.
With the closure of the BRTS, the city’s decades-old dream of having a reliable public transport system has also come to an end. The Metro Bus service has remained shut since July 2023, and its fleet of 92 buses has been lying idle at the Verka Bypass depot, slowly turning into scrap.
The BRTS is not the first public transport project to fail in Amritsar. The City Bus Service, launched in 2015, also ceased operations within a few months, leaving around 60 buses unused.
The Metro Bus service was launched in 2016 by the then SAD-BJP government and received a good response from commuters in its initial years. The project was later neglected during the Congress government and was only partly revived when Navjot Singh Sidhu was the Local Bodies Minister.
However, the biggest problem was the lack of a permanent funding system. Operations and staff were managed through private companies. Due to frequent disputes between the companies and the government, the service was suspended several times before it was finally shut down in July 2023 after the operating company’s contract ended.
The closure of the service left nearly 1,000 employees without jobs and affected more than 40,000 daily commuters, mainly students and office-goers, who lost an affordable and dependable mode of transport.
Sandhu has called the approval to remove the BRTS corridor a major achievement, saying it will help reduce traffic problems. However, the municipal corporation has so far only passed a resolution to remove the corridor. The cost of dismantling the infrastructure has not yet been made public.
The project also came at a heavy environmental cost. Hundreds of centuries-old trees along the Mall Road and GT Road were cut down to build the BRTS corridor. Over the past year, authorities had already started removing ticket counters and other equipment from the BRTS stations, indicating that there was little chance of the service being revived.
Social activist Pawan Sharma described the failure of the BRTS as a “collective failure” of successive governments and the administration. He said public money had been wasted on a project that failed to provide lasting benefits. Sharma also questioned the decision to remove the corridor without consulting the people and said Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann should explain the government’s stand on closing the project. “Now, political leaders and officials are waiting for 100 electric buses to be provided under a Central Government scheme. We fear that the e-bus service could meet the same fate if the government does not fix accountability of officials concerned and political leaders.”
