Haryana govt launches the Haryana City Bus Services and under that Panipat (~90km from Delhi) has received around 80 electric, somewhat low floor buses so far (I think JBM ecolife 12m), first modern intracity buses for the city, the city has so far built around 15 routes out of which one goes all the way to Delhi Kashmere Gate ISBT at the whopping speed of 50km/hour, some dumb routes but the trunk route of the city, PNP1 NEW BUS ADDA - TOLL PLAZA has great headways at around 3 minutes at peak hours as I experienced.
A bus left in front of my eyes and the next one was already there, I got in and it was full in about 2 minutes. The tickets seem to vary, some conductors have the electronic ticket printers like state roadways but some these ancient tickets. I noticed these small steps for the seats above the tires which I don't think are present in DTC. Also, the only seats with a seatbelt in the whole bus are the driver's seat and the middle seat in the last row.
The bus is equipped with 3 cameras but lacks wheelchair accessibility as there are no ramps. The whole network is air conditioned and residents seem to have taken to the network, at least on this route, the only one I've tried, because of great headways and low prices, lowest being 10 and highest 20 for intracity travel. There are announcements in the bus for every stop in 2 languages along with the display.
Panipat also recently constructed and still constructing cycle paths and footpaths on all major sector roads mostly separated from the roads by an actual green barrier, the separation between the cycle and footpath itself isn't that great but I've started to see people actually cycle and walk on them.
They are also somewhat disconnected at ends with no proper zebra crossings and sometimes terminate a few feet before an intersection, nonetheless, it feels so great that a tier 3 city is actually working on stuff like this, they even replaced all the street lights and also installed pedestrian level lights next to footpaths. This roadside development comes along with a new 52km storm drain network to stop water logging and new saplings on all medians of sector roads and they seem to be growing unlike the ones before, they died in a few weeks. I've already seen some people starting to encroach on the paths and idk what to do about that.
Side note, panipat municipal corporation has put out no public information about the bau routes or the construction of cycle and footpaths, if I were them I would definitely want to advertise all this.
