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
Forward this Forum topic
You know what??? Is it true??
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.
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.
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.
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
models etc...
'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.
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.
Can we do this way .....
tickets
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.
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.
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
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
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.”
Monopoly
-Shastri
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)!
going to the garages
BMTC, rather it's monopoly, is the problem!
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.
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.
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
Suvarna is not Gold but very expensive
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.
Re: Vasanth
User Interaction Designer
Bangalore
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
www.driving-india.blogspot.com
Invite Project Proposals ?
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:
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
It was weekday only
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