A preachy America and a prickly India are both mouthing off over the world food crisis. Some of India's political leadership was foaming at the mouth on Saturday after misconstruing US President George Bush's remark that increasing prosperity in India had led to better diets, greater demand, and increasing prices, all of which had contributed to the global food crisis.

The BRT in Beijing was opened in December 2005 and was an instant success, way beyond official predictions about its ridership. The predictions had said that by 2007, a total of 1.5 lakh people would be using the system per day. The figure for the 10km route touched 1.3 lakh on the third day. The system has 17 bus stations across eight residential areas with a total population of about 2 lakh. The CM might hope for similar luck with the system back home when she returns.

With a hand up in the air, a motley juggernaut of cars, bikes, autos, cycles and handcarts on the busy Chirag Dilli crossing comes to a halt. Heads turn expectantly towards the hand for the go signal. In minutes, another wave of hand, and the traffic is snaking furiously ahead.

Facing flak at home over the BRT fiasco, chief minister Sheila Dikshit is now looking eastwards for inspiration. Dikshit, along with four city government officials, is all set to fly to Beijing later this month and officials say a trip to the Beijing BRT to see how it is working may be on the cards. The official purpose of the visit, though, is to see the preparations for the Olympic Games.

Thursday presented a now familiar picture of chaos and congestion at the 5.6 kilometre-long BRT stretch. While traffic pile-ups showed no signs of abating, despite certain traffic marshals claiming that they had reduced, numerous motorists plied in wrong lanes with no threat of penalty. Pedestrians, meanwhile, continued to cross helter skelter, with no regard for signals or zebra crossings.

With no feeders, BRT goes nowhere We asked our readers if they would dump their cars to take buses in the BRT corridor. A majority of them have rejected the idea saying the entire project is unjustified and unwanted and should be scrapped immediately No one can dare to dump cars

Pilot Stretch Cost About Rs 60 Cr, Cure More Expensive The state government is determined to continue its dreary plod along the BRT. It has asked the transport department and DIMTS to make it work at any cost, even consider options like constructing a Rs 200-odd crore flyover to buttress the Rs 60-crore pilot stretch.

A DTC bus crashed into a bus shelter near Press Enclave on the pilot BRT corridor on Thursday. Said Anil Kumar Gupta, a traffic marshal who witnessed the incident:

A bus packed with commuters, a narrow corridor with little space to manoeuvre and people running to a bus stop located in the middle of the road

There is some respite coming the way for commuters stuck in unending traffic jams on the pilot Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor. By the end of the week, five airconditioned buses will start plying on four routes traversing the length of the 5.6 km long corridor. Incidentally, this is the first time the Capital will have state-run AC buses plying as part of the bus-based public transport fleet.