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BMTC Suvarna peak hour service

saw this report on BMTC's long planned peak hour service.

http://www.thehindu.com/2008/04/01/stories/2008040159230300.htm

It was disappointing to see a good idea being executed badly. (Murali sir was not at all surprised!). If you see the routes almost all of them touch - Kempegowda Bus Stand. I thought that place was crowded as it is without another set of buses attempting to enter them. Have any of you (except Vasanth) been to Subhashnagar bus stand? There is log jam inside the bus stand and buses that are ready to go cannot leave because they are surrounded by other buses.

No direct routes from say Koramangala to ITPL or Jayanagar to E-City or from Vijayanagar to Bannerghatta Road or from Srinagar to Peenya? You want connectivity in the morning which will take you from home to your workspot fairly quickly. This does not serve the purpose.

I would have designed things a bit differently. Let's say I have a bus from Jayanagar 5th block to ITPL. I would have it go from Jayanagar 5th block to 4th block to T-block to 9th block and then BTM Layout. From there non-stop on ORR till Brooke Fields and then again stops inside EPIP,etc. Fixed fare from any place to any place - say Rs.10 to avoid change problems.

I am inclined to agree more and more with Murali sir.

Srivathsa

bangalorean's picture

You know what??? Is it true??

When Bangalore - Mangalore railway service did not start for long time, we all blamed government bodies for not starting it. We all knew in the back of our minds that there may be some lobbying going on, but it never came to the fore front, until recently when the Shiradi Ghat was badly damaged and were finally unable to keep up with their services. And then finally came the Jumbo Train, yet to be launched full fledged and passenger capacity. God knows how many such lobbies exists in bangalore preventing smoother implementation of public transport. (Is it true??)..
namma_nadu's picture

BMTC defines the city

Ever wondered why its so difficult to use BMTC. Simply because they are not aligned to the work places. Years ago - Bangalore was defined by 3 Centres/hot spots - Majestic, Market (KR) and Shivajinagar. The shantinagar bus stand is such a joke - because it serves no purpose - except for being a money spinner for BMTC - thanks to Big Bazar. For people working in CBD and staying in BTM (like me) - we dont have a choice but to use a personal vehicle.  There is no bus save 201 (which is badly run) which takes me to my office location. Alternate is to go to Jayanagar 4th block - take a bus to shivajinagar and finally an auto to my office. Crazy aint it? No wonder the personal vehicle commuting is the chosen mode of transport.

Even for the international airport - there is no service from BTM - The nearest route is "2" from JP nagar 6th phase. Hopefully an EC bus will ply thru BTM.

Vasanth's picture

Grid Route is what we need

Grid route as against to Hub Spoke Model is what we need to cater all round the city with a definite and good frequency with the concept of 'Transfers'. Now normal BMTC bus fare is too high and changing the buses will make it even more expensive - compare it to a 4 stroke 100cc commuter bike like the splendor/ct100, bus commute is very expensive as well as time consuming. How people will come to buses?

I saw the Suvarna Bus and nothing was found special. Entire bus was made of steel - that's all. It is not having Low Floor Rear Engine  like the Volvo. Also, the routes are nothing special, same routes, new buses. Very bad planning. A special pass is also needed to board this bus - another misconcept.

Our Town Planning as well as Transit Planning do not go together. Most of the international cities goes for a CBD concept with enforcement of Public Transport to travel to CBD. Since the businesses here in Bangalore is spread across all over, it becomes trickier to plan a good transit too. Vaguely, IT companies were started at remote corners ITPL and EC. Now, employees living in proper Bangalore have to spend nearly 4 hrs for their commute.

 

 

 

 

silkboard's picture

Grid/matrix vs hub/spoke

Let us list down all arguments against Hub and spoke model. And then compare them with Grid/matrix approach.

1) Lack of faith in BMTC to manage the crowded hubs well. Two points here. a) can BMTC provide enough amenities inside the Hubs to draw upper/middle class commuters? b) can BMTC manage traffic around the Hub (lots of buses fighting with lots of cars and bikes)

2) Wait time enforced on passenger at the Hubs. Hub to Hub frequencies may be lot higher than Hub to a satellite frequency. So your wait time could depend on how the schedule is synchronized

3) Longer trip route. sometimes to go to point A, you may have to go father to a nearby Hub, and then come back to point A

4) Private transport till the Hub A) Autos: Will the compete or complement the buses running from Hub to satellites? B) Parking: will BMTC be able to provide ample parking at the Hubs so that I can drive up to the hub myself?

Add more negatives to this, once we think we have them all, let us see how they get addressed in the Grid/Matrix model. 

ssheragu's picture

one positively good addition

one positively good addition to the Shantinagar bs Stand would be an underpass (wide enough for two Volvo Buses to maneouver side by side) and thus prevent traffic jam at the circle

 

tsubba's picture

models etc...

in terms of number of interchanges, the grid is infinitely superior to any other model. if realized fully, grids have max two changes. but sri has conclusively proved to me in previous discussions that, whether it is grid or hub & spoke (H&S) it has to be span all modes. you want to do grids, ok fine, you want to do hub and spoke fine too. fundamental idea must be to make these networks pan-mode systems. fundamental thing is do it across modes. want to go to malleshwaram from jayanagar? go north and then west. or go to najestic and take an an interchange. fine too. but the fundamental idea should be that mode does not matter. you could take bus, train and the mono or a mixture of these enroute. breaking this problem mode wise is a sure shot recipe for disaster. we now have a plan for metro, even if it takes awhile to develop, BMTC should concentrate on maturing its services to complement that plan. in terms of entropy due to traffic, bmtc cannot do grids becoz grids are more chaotic than hub and spoke. one can talk about grids, and direction based navigation, but if you cannot achieve any reliability metrics then it makes no difference to bangalore. going north from BSK to hebbal if you cannot establish any reliability metric then a theoretical model, irrespctive of its theoretical merits has no meaning. bogota ands its grid is sexy. but what is bogota's map and what is bangalore's map? bogota looks like this. the city is land locked by the hills and is longer than it is wide. so a network like this makes sense: http://www.surumbo.com/si... but what about bangalore and "bruhat" bangalore? its all cirular. i mean we cannot build ntworks in variance to our geography and our science. it is important to realize grids and H&S work in different environments. grids work in direction based navigation and H&S works in landmark based navigation. fundamental issue, is we as a people are used to landmark based navigation as opposed to direction based navigation. how do we give directions? straight ge hogi, lefaT ge tiragidre , doDDa aaladmara sigutte, alli matte lefaT ge tirugidre marammana guDi sigutte ... having spent a significant amount of my adult life on navigating robots (not much different from people who dont know directions), i must submit that relative navigation is an uber efficient and robust way for local planning and navigation. this has got nothing to do with our cultural short commings. i bet naveen, who navigates ships, which are essential blind by themselves, can vouch for this. the advantages of generic navigation vs benefits of local navigation. i dont care which waters you are navigating, you hit a local pocket you need local expertise.
Naveen's picture

'Navigating' Locally

TS - Well said !

I have been listening to the grid-route concept & had never bought the argument - not for Bangalore, the way it is now. Whilst I was in college, I used to reside at Jayanagar, with very broad criss-crossing avenues (for the low traffic volumes then), & had to walk a lot from, say 5th block or 8th block to 4th block bus station for better connectivity options. Those days, it might have made sense, but certainly not the bangalore of today - you would have a lot of chaos & futher delays as bus routes would clash everywhere. More importantly, we do not have the entire city covered for such a network.

But I do feel that loads need to be reduced at KG bus stn, city mkt & shivajinagar as these places have become very chaotic during peak hours. The Jakkarayanakere plan to shift BMTC bus stn was aborted since local /state buses would become too distant from the railway station, I suppose. So, the option being carried out now is to develop several TTMCs & multi-modal hubs at Peenya, Byappanahalli, Hosur road & Hebbal, if I remember correctly - these look okay to me.

s_yajaman's picture

Each has advantages - both are possible in Bangalore

One of the big advantages of a hub and spoke model is getting better frequencies between hubs and therefore better customer service overall.  Imagine if Jet Airways tried to connect all its destinations through direct flights.  You would need many more aircraft and many would be flying half full.

The disadvantage would be the increased distances because of not traveling in straight lines from point to point.  One would have to make a detour to reach the hub more often than not.  Hubs also need excellent management to avoid congestion.

BMTC can go in for both options.  There will be routes where hubs are redundant because there is enough scale to run buses frequently between the two end points - if not through out the day - then at least during some intervals (peak hours).  There will be end points where this is not feasible at any time of the day.  In which case better connectivity can be only through hubs.  There is no point in giving 2 trips a day between Uttarahalli and Marathahalli - few people have the luxury of planning their work around bus schedules.  (If any of you have seen the published schedules, you will see many routes with 2-3 trips/day).  In P&G we used to do SKU rationalization to avoid the complexity of maintaining low volume SKUs.

The key data has to be consumer demand via surveys done with commuters.  It should not be based on ticket sales because of obvious reasons (I hope BMTC is not using the latter approach!!).  You need to (over a month) ask individual commuters at key residential areas their ultimate destination.  Use that to define routes and frequencies.

BMTC needs to develop 3-4 more hubs to decongest the current ones - probably one in each direction(?) - Koramangala/HSR side, Jayanagar 4th block, Vijayanagar area come to mind.  Roads around the hubs have to be broad and without too many intersections. 

There is no rocket science in any of this. 

Srivathsa

 

Drive safe.  It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.

bangalorean's picture

Can we do this way .....

It is for every one to see that, BMTC which boasts as the only transport company making profit, is not planning for its services, and still making profit. It is mainly due tto the large number of people using it. We can make it much better, if some is listening i have one improvment suggestion, BMTC should divide bangalore into zones and much more smaller zones and provide transport from some remote area to some bigger Bus stand. We donot need direct bus from everywhere to everywhere. BMTC should provide connectivity from interiors to some big roads like inner ring road at a frequency of five minutes. Say from remote area inside BTM to either Inner ring road or hosur road. In this way BMTC can handle, every remote location efficiently and main grid busses always runs on big main roads and does not go into interior locations. Right now whats happenining is there is a bus from every nooke and corner to Market or Majestic. See what happens is when all these busses hit Majestic or Market at the same time from all the areas, the chaos, which is not needed, we need localized transport and main grid busses taking care of major routes. For example: Main Grid Route: From Bannerghatta to Majestic every 5 min interval, takes the main road and does not venture into interiors) Interior Grid: Small busses plying every 5 min from interiors of bannerghatta (arkere, Bikehalli) and dropping people to the Main Grid. Can we plan this Way.....?????? --Bangalorean
tsubba's picture

tickets

should not be based on ticket sales bcoz it will only tell you about existing network, right? also with grids, they are talking about direction based transit. not point to point. point to point is still hub and spoke.
s_yajaman's picture

Tickets sales are based on supply and current network

Tarle,

Using ticket sales to estimate demand biases the numbers in favour of today's network.  If the only bus from Vijayanagar is to Majestic then the ticket sales will be 100% to Majestic.  Using that data to suggest that people go only to Majestic from Vijayanagar is a bit silly.

I would not get caught up with two particular models or the words describing them.  I think the solution would be based on them and would meet the requirements of 75-80% of the people.

Bangalorean has also brought out an important point.  The lack of intra locality services. 

Srivathsa

Drive safe.  It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.

navshot's picture

Wheel and Spoke....

...as opposed to Hub and Spoke? How about that? I'd this idea elsewhere a while back. A high-speed "wheel"-shaped route all along ORR - possibly a metro/mono rail. Then, from multiple points on ORR, have BMTC connect the city areas inwards (and outwards). Say you want to travel from Jayanagar to R.T. Nagar: Catch a BMTC to nearest "wheel" station on ORR. Catch metro/mono and go over till Hebbal on ORR and from there catch another BMTC. Ofcourse, as some of you said, multiple modes have to be truely integrated into a single system.

This also helps in decongesting central areas.

Maybe this is what s_yajaman implicitly said in the original post.

 

-- navshot
shrikanthnk's picture

BMTC has asked Feedback

BMTC has asked feedback from the commuters and citizens of bangalore regarding the Suvarna peak hour bus service. I feel the praja members here can give their thoughts and suggestions. This has come in todays TOI page 9.

It will be very advantageous to all commuters if BMTC take atleast partial ideas from this blog

ssheragu's picture

I have one suggestion

I hsve one suggestion

can we praja members

sit down

get the various routes from BMTC

use google map and alter these routes for best connectivity and minimum time

take up these routes and implement these routes as signal free route with BBMP / BMRDA

make sure that BMTC runs buses on these routes

 

Srinath Heragu

pradeep's picture

Suvarna peak hour bus service

This Suvarna peak hour bus service will add to the existing traffic issues.

 Can the GoK remove private buses who ferry passengers from city center be removed. Ex: Take Hosur Road..there are private buses from Banashankari to Attibele, City Market to Atiibele along with BMTC buses from other places.This causes inc in taffic.Any way since Govt and Private buses travell in the same road, they can remove ban private buses entering into the city.The Govt buses will ferry passengers till E-City or far and drop the passengers and from there they can use private buses.

Regards,

Pradeep

“An act of charity by the citizens questions the worthiness of the government.” 

shas3n's picture

Monopoly

Pradeep, if there are private AND public buses are running on the routes you mentioned, it means that there are enough commuters for this to be economically viable. In that case it is not a good idea to give BMTC exclusive rights and hence monopoly. That would only worsen the service levels. The ideal thing would be to think of an alternative like metro rail or if that is not viable, to enforce regulations to ensure safety and let the private guys come in. Then the competition would ensure the best for the consumers. I guess Murali Sir wrote about this a while ago. Competition is good for the consumers. Could you imagine the state of mobile telephony in India if BSNL was given the exclusive rights? -Shastri

-Shastri

blrsri's picture

gears

Hub, grid, wheel all are nice..an extension to the wheel idea is the multiple gears! ;)

with the hub/wheel approach we have seen the subhash nagar jam..it sometimes (festivals) gets jammed upto city corp. My friend preferred to walk to majestic to catch his bus on deepavali eve from corporation..it took him lot less time..though its an another issue that his 9PM Bijapur bus took 2 hours to get to yeshwantpur!

So another design is the gears where the gear hubs are connected by metro..this will avoid major hubs rush as explained above and also address the grid problems of round about trips by addressing the short times needed to make the trips!

It would be good to reallign metro to touch major bus stops(hubs)..instead of charting its own way..so a person trying to reach yeshwantpur from 4th block never has another option than the metro(1 & 1E will go absolete)!

tsubba's picture

going to the garages

ok sri, understood. sure but if we increase the number of interchanges, and at each interchange there is a wait period it becomes highly unattractive. for long hauls two changes is fine. but the problem is medium ranges. (about 45% trips < 9 kms) i think we are all talking around the same point. need to get it sorted out properly. terminology is not important, but i am unable to understand a few things on the thread. main grids, local grids fine. but how does it work? need to sit down and read this thread properly.
murali772's picture

BMTC, rather it's monopoly, is the problem!

As the co-Chairman of the erstwhile (I don't know if it has been officially wound up - I still get invites to some of their events, though it invariably reaches after the event) Commuter Comfort Task Force (of BMTC), I re-defined comfort as pertaining to 'better connectivity' (rather than seat cushion thickness, etc, on which aspects the BMTC buses are fairly better placed compared to those of other states), and worked out a grid scheme. I had sent the entire report to Silkboard (aka Pranav), sometime back, since I do not have the technology to put it up here (May be he's finding it too elaborate - perhaps we can discuss it at the proposed meet at Capt Naveen's place). The entire exercise has been done already. It can of course be improved upon. But, when BMTC's main objective (of course, unstated) is anything and everything other than providing good connectivity, there's no way to making them accountable than providing healthy competition. Here, the blue-line (of Delhi) kind of operations had led people to thinking that private participation was not the answer, without their understanding the why's of it all. With the answers available now, the debate appears to have moved on to various alternate forms of PPP - the Indore/ Delhi BRT model being the front-runner. But, like I had argued in my blog http://traffic-transport-..., the problem here is the huge loss of green cover, apart from this remaining essentially a 'license-permit' arrangement, with too much of governmental control. The better alternative is discussed at http://bangalore.praja.in... Muralidhar Rao
Muralidhar Rao
Vasanth's picture

Corporate level private players

If we have multiple corporate private bus companies running their services with few guidelines and discipline that needs to be followed, it is welcome move. But, the kind of private vehicles that ply on Hosur road or few Tempo Travellers that ply on the ring road or the buses near Banashankari are all run by unprofessional driver,conductor and cleaner combination. Those colorful crowded buses with distinct lighting inside, the cleaner / conductor simply tapping the bus and making the side vehicles afraid, especially 2 wheelers, always glowing indicators, that harsh and crazy horn, etc. used by private buses makes travel in private buses a horrible experience. What we need is a professional private bus operator like VRL, Sharma etc.. to operate the private buses.

Myself and Murali Sir are on a constant argument of privatization. I feel it is OK if a corporate controlled operator is operating the buses with strict guidelines. Airline privatization improved aviation field mainly because it is corporate controlled. Who will get into an unnamed private plane without any corporate brand?

It is a good idea to have local buses going to the heart of localities and connect it into main road routes like Bannerghatta Road with frequent buses. These routes operating license can be bidded to corporate level private operators.

 

Vasanth's picture

Suvarna Peak Hour Buses - A suggestion

I feel and I have seen, most of the Government officials working in state Government travel towards Vidhana Soudha / MS building. Existing bus model serves them with peak hour service to Vidhana Soudha.

Ofcourse, there are Government offices spread across Bangalore. Let us put it aside and discuss the other possibilities.

Most of the techies offices are on Bannerghatta Road, EC, Whitefield surroundings, Kormangala,Airport Road and on Sarjapur Road. Since the IT companies came recently to Bangalore say 15-20 years back, if they would have provided excellent transport and not allowing private vehicles, it could have been fantastic. But, that is a gone story. Now, just like Vidhana Soudha service, during peak hours, if buses are provided from various areas to these areas, it would be really successful. For example, Nagharbhavi Layout to EC via Chandra Layout, Vijaynagar Maruthi Mandir, BHEL Circle, Nayandahalli Circle, Inner Ring Road till Bannerghatta Road, right on to Bannerghatta Road then take somewhere left and reach Hosur Road and then to EC.

Second route from Nagarbhavi Layout to Whitefield via same route upto Bannerghatta Road and take left towards Dairy Circle, again take right, pass infront of Forum, enter Kormangala, pass via Kormangala Inner Ring Road, take right onto Airport Road in Domlur Circle, reach Marathalli and continue further towards Whitefield. Kormangala on the other hand should have locally roaming buses to give connectivity to inner localities.

These are two examples I am providing. But, there is some sort of confusion in differences between office starting times. BMTC should align its routes like this.

Another suggestion is to introduce A/C buses like the Sheethal KSRTC's bus. Volvo is welcome, but, it is expensive for both commuter as well as the department. A/C comfort is very much needed for the nature of people who travel to these areas. The existing Suvarna peak hour bus is nothing but a steel bus. Model of the bus itself needs to be changed to attract the people with electronic display like the Vajra Volvo.

Same buses can be used on the weekends to entertainment areas and tourist interesting places.

murali772's picture

time for a PIL?

You couldn't have put it better. Due to my relentless criticism, BMTC invited me to become the co-Chairman of their Commuter Comfort Task Force. After some 2 years of seeing the organisation from within, I am all the more convinced that they can become customer oriented, only, and only, if there's effective competition from organised private sector players.

So, folks, let's not waste time, any more. Let's build up a constituency with that objective in mind, gather momentum, and launch a PIL, if required. Meanwhile, let's have the political parties include it in their manifesto's.

Muralidhar Rao

Muralidhar Rao
Vasanth's picture

Suvarna is not Gold but very expensive

Two days back I took Volvo to my office from Kattriguppe to Jayadeva which costed me 15 rupees only, whereas on my return I could not get Volvo after waiting for long and had to take Suvarna. I was charged 14 rupees for the same distance in Suvarna. On my way to the office, Volvo took me in 40 minutes (without bus waiting time, bus waiting additional 10 minutes) due to the round abouts since there is construction of magic underpasses. BMTC Volvos go like a Metro Train when the road is empty. It was the traffic which was the culprit and I felt the need of the BRTS with the Volvos. Meanwhile commute to my office on my two wheeler through internal roads is just 20 minutes!!! Suvarna on the way back with the same amount of traffic took literally 1hour with its sluggish engine. No A/C. No low floor. It is not worth every pie.
s_yajaman's picture

Singapore bus routes

Got my hands on a Singapore bus guide.  Noticed a couple of things.

a. They have just about 250 routes for both bus companies put together covering an area as big as Bangalore.  Of course the MRT takes the bulk of passengers.

b. Based on a random sample of routes, the average length of a route in one direction was about 20 km; frequency was in the 10-15 min range on an average.  One loop service (36 from Changi Airport to Orchard) runs for 63 km!!  Fares range from $0.70 to about $1.80.  Express buses charge a flat fare of $3 or so.

Driver fatigue is minimized by air-con buses, auto transmission and bus lanes (some 24 hr bus lanes).  Unbelievably disciplined drivers added to this mix makes it probably the best bus service in the world (I believe HK is as good) - of course no Singaporean worth his salt  will admit that.  They use 3 bus models - Volvo, Scania and Mercedes Benz.  Fair number of double decker buses as well. 

We are doing something very wrong here with close to 2000 routes.

Srivathsa

 

Drive safe.  It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.

narayan82's picture

Re: Vasanth

I think your Volvo ride was onl Rs 15 because it was a govt holiday. Hence the discount. Else you would pay about 30 - 45 rupees I think! Still I agree suvarna can be made much more passenger freindly. In fact what surprises me is Vajras are known as "Volvos." Why cant Leyland and Tatas come up with an equivalent bus which is cheaper?
Narayan Gopalan
User Interaction Designer
Bangalore
asj's picture

Bus routes and frequencies

Srivathsa,

Do look up the case study on route and frequency rationalisation (I have made a reference to Singapore bus routes as well)

http://www.praja.in/pune/discuss/2008/07/rationalising-and-reforming-bus-routes-case-example

ASJ

kbsyed61's picture

Invite Project Proposals ?

Srivastha, You are right on when you made a remark that there is something fundamentally wrong in BMTC's route design. This point has been discussed over and over on Praja. I think time has come for engaging BMTC's powers to be to do the justice to B'lore's public. I would suggest a 2 prong strategy for this. On one front engage BMTC's policy makers, and on another front facilitate a solid technical and sound project proposal with each and every minute details for rationalizing. For project proposals, my suggestion is, Praja invites proposals from Engineering/University/Management Students on this bus routes. To be serious and committed, award a handsome prizes for best 3 entries - 1st Prize (Rs.100,000), 2nd Prize (Rs. 50,000) and 3rd Prize (Rs. 25,000). I am sure our friends in Industry and businesses would be more than happy to sponsor this project initiative. Look forward to thoughts and feedback on this proposal. Syed
kbsyed61's picture

More Clarity on BMTC Route rationalization proposals !

Let me take the liberty of clarifying my earlier suggestion of inviting project proposal on BMTC route rationalization. We all agree that BMTC, Bangalore in particular needs to have its public transport rationalized its routes. If I am not wrong, in past last 4 decades BMTC has not done anything radical except for VV Airport service and its route number changes in 70s. BMTC can not go on adding new routes without rationalizing its network.

 BMTC management is busy with their mundane duties. We all are busy with jobs, industry and some indulgence in social initiatives from various forums like Praja, BC etc. That leaves very little bandwidth on Praja and BMTC management for this serious job. My suggestion is to get some fresh and young minds to work on the solution with minute possible details. They can take the serious and good initiatives from Narayan, Murali Sir, ASJ and other praja members on the thread forward.

http://praja.in/bangalore/blog/narayan82/2008/05/30/bmtc-zones-and-routes

In  that situation this is what I am proposing:

  1. Praja with the help of Industry and business chambers invites a comprehensive solution proposal to rationalize the BMTC routes.
  2. Praja and BMTC to set clear objectives.
  3. Proposals to be serious, scientific, technical and viable.
  4. The participants can take the works of Narayan and ASJ as a basis for further works. 
  5. Open for Students in Engineering/University/management courses. They can take assistance from experts.
  6. Time limit of 3-5 months.
  7. Selection by a panel from Praja, BMTC, business & industry chambers and experts in public transportation.
  8. Suggestion for 100k, 50k and 25k prize money for first 3 best proposals.
  9. Mandatory to record the current information on present routes, coverage, ridership, peak times, popular routes, upcoming areas, future demands etc.

Looking forward to have some serious discussion on this proposal. We need to take our first meeting with BMTC MD forward and convert into some doable action.

Note, as I had mentioned in my earlier post, this is to be taken on parallely with engaging BMTC management for implementing this work.

Syed

 

Vasanth's picture

It was weekday only

Narayan, it was weekday only. I gave the conductor 40 rupees, he gave me back 2 10s that I gave him plus 5 rupees. I reconfirmed with him since when I travelled last time it was 25 rupees. He told may be long back, and now fares have reduced for Volvo.
murali772's picture

three-pronged strategy

Syed-bhai

Let it be three-pronged strategy, with me heading the third prong - for demanding competition for BMTC. Please also read

http://bangalore.praja.in/blog/murali772/2008/10/08/ksrtc-out-kill-even-existing-competition


Let's have a bet as to which will work.

Now, I was the Co-Chairman of BMTC's CCTF (Commuter Comfort Task Force), and spend a good part of two years to come up with a report emphasising largely 'route rationalisation'. Some bit of the proposals were implemented, but in a very half-hearted way, which only went on to make things worse. Long before I worked on it, there was a proposal from a certain Mr Parameswaran (retired fleet manager, HAL), which was also accepted by the BMTC board. It had its own merits. But, with all that, it was never implemented. Mr P is still pursuing it, and quite doggedly too. In fact, he went to on to present it to the Transportation Study Dept of some Ivy League college in the US/ UK, where his son/ s-i-l apparently is on the faculty, and he claims it was well received. The efforts have all largely gone waste.

As compared to that, if a TVS or TATA were running the bus services, they would have taken up all of them, and improved further. Perhaps, I would have had a job also, except of course, if Doc ASJ decides to upset the apple-cart.

So, do you still want to take me on with the bet?

Muralidhar Rao

Muralidhar Rao

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