"The Karnataka High Court on Monday directed the state government to constitute an expert committee to look into the feasibility of implementing the BMTC feeder bus service.
While hearing the public interest litigation filed by N Parameswaran, a retired employee of HAL, Chief Justice J S Khehar directed the government to constitute an expert committee consisting of one technical expert to examine the possibility of adopting the service in the city. The report should be submitted within four weeks to the court, the bench stated.
The petitioner had submitted that he had designed a comprehensive feeder bus service system in the city and as planned, commuters would get three to four buses to reach the destination. The petitioner argued that with this service commuters could reach their destination without changing buses. "The feeder bus service will provide frequent services to commuters and 50 feeder roads and 50 trunk roads are enough to implement this project," he argued.
For the full report in the New Indian Express, click here
May be this team should set up a dialogue with the die-hard Mr Parameswaran and check on the feasibility of his scheme, if its decision is to continue with the monopoly BMTC, which is where I differ. - Murali
Note: I am upgrading the news item that Muarli sir had posted as comments in other minibus post to discussion post for some focus discussion on this topic
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Lets discuss the M Parameswran here
Lets discuss the issues related to Mr. Params's PIL and the court ruling here.
there will be no further news
Coverage of specific court cases like these is very poor. I doubt we will have more news to discuss on this. And its so hard to find the details of ruling and petition itself on the High Court websites.
Speaking of which, wouldn't we all benefit if court cases were easy to track, with all details (evidences presented and argued, judgements delivered so far) of cases available online? Is it the case today? Haven't checked recently.
As for routing itself, minibuses thread is okay, minibuses are key part of routing scheme anyway :)
Bangaloreans want end to end buses-Parameswaran model other way
Bangaloreans as well as in any city of India, people are reluctant to change multiple buses. This we all know is due to:
1. Buses not stopping in bus stops, stopping behind or ahead of bus stop or in the centrelane of road and expecting passengers to board the bus in centre lane. Getting into one bus and coming out of itself is tiring due to drivers bad habits.
2. Changing multiple buses needs walking on bad or non-existent foot paths making it very tiring and builds up frustation resulting in giving up public transport for further trips. Especially for the aged and ladies and in night times, it is very difficult.
3. If you get one bus, you won't get other. You will end up with multiple wait cycles leading to increased travel time.
4. If you compare a private transport with public transport, private transport gives end to end non-stop nowait apart from jams scenario. People mostly look for end to end connectivity or maximum one hop.
5. Fares for the trip will also increase due to multiple hops.
Incase if Parameswaran model is implemented, it may result in less usage of public transportation.
Changing multiple buses
Changing multiple buses needs walking on bad or non-existent foot paths
Instead of trying to fix the problems of access to bus why do we have to make bus mimic private transport which it can never do?
If you compare a private transport with public transport
Public transport can only be compared on the benefits it provides to the long term motorized traffic scenario of a city and the population it will serve and the side benefits of increased ped facilities it will provide. All other parameters of comparision can be lopsided and cause harm to the overall vision. The nature of mass transit vision needs to be accepted by the people and any obstructions in that vision needs to be removed. Not to alter that vision to fix short term gains
Fares for the trip will also increase due to multiple hops.
This can be easily solved by adopting intelligent ticketing practices which can detect change overs and price appropriately. Smart cards being contemplated can make this easier.
Vasanth, plan can not be just busses and routes!
Vasanth,
Prameswaran and everybody else including us who aspiring for a better PT system in the city. But for that to happen it certainly needs improvements and fixes in every aspect of the current system. Just adding more buses or changing routes would not be sufficient. When the system is centered around fewer routes and change over is taken into consideration, it will be disaster if change over points are not improved and made user friendly. Same goes with ticketing. For PT to be acceptable to the majority it has to offer more tangible benefits, i.e Reliability, cost effectiveness, ease of use, long term benefit to the society etc. Most PT systems in the world are not run for profits but for fulfilling social and economical objectives to sustain living and economics.
If every aspect of PT systems doesn't get fixed in the scheme of things, then rest assured it will meet the same fate as HoHo service. Even though the service was well positioned and well intentioned, it did not get the patronization that it should have. If one takes a closer look at the failure of HoHo will understand why bus stops, buses stopping at bus stop, public awareness, ticket transfer etc matters in scheme of things. Few reasons I have concluded from various on ground reports and first hand experience are as follows:
Having said all these,I would urge everybody on Praja that we should demand for improving the bus supporting infrastructure like Bus stops, last mile options, Safe Bus Transfer, information availability, citizen friendly Ped Xings and Bus Priority lanes. Otherwise any change would only be cosmetic.
-Syed
I agree
Adding to Syed, not an integrated approach should be adopted but keeping the future growth of city, human/vehicular population. I hope there are adequate planning tools/methods/models to estimate the 360 degree growth projection.
fix the root - quality of interchanges
Vasanth - you said it well. Instead of working around the problem, quality of interchanges needs to be improved, its a really critical broken link in Bus based PT today in Bangalore. Fit case for a Praja Advocacy/lobbying project, with 3-4 big interchange hubs as pilots, pushing BBMP/BDA etc with some goood designs.
footpaths not interchanges
Generally bus stops near junctions are far apart, be it signalled or flyovered junction. So when i have to change a bus i have to walk 500m. i dont mind that distance as walking is good for health. But footpaths in city are so bad i feel bad to change buses. so, if bmtc got money, it can make good footpaths near junctions between bus stops where many people change bus under "bus stops jodo pariyojana".
we need end to end and also the feeder services.
Vasanth and syed.
Bangalore PT needs all types of services but the BMTC needs to re-work thte routing system from the scratch.
Vasanth look the present FEEDER service FDR-1 &2. These two routes are helping a lot for many.
The PT needs a monitoring agency at majors bus stands and locations so that the crew doesn't waste time or skip the trips.
The BMTC needs to take survey atleast every 6 months so that they can do the routing as needed. At present they are introducing new routes without any logic.
BMTC needs to take feedback from majore organizations if not the public.
We need BMTC adalat JUST LIKE THE BWWSB adalat's happening every month in each division.
FDR-1 and FDR-2 are good
FDR-1 and FDR-2 are good services but what about others-Ever since Depot-33 started at Uttarahalli FDR-1 and 2 have seen great mprovements-but FDR-4,5,6 etc have just a single bus plying and hence isnt of any use-FDR-4 is a good connector of Uttarahalli to Gottigere and Jayanagar-FDR-6 runs viaJambu savari dinne RBI layout and Puttehalli from Chikkalasandra on its way to Jayanagar-but frequency wise both the buses lack
378 a recent introduction is a very good service provider between Kengeri and E.City and has a awsome freuqency-we need a bs from Jayanagar or Banashankari to electronic city with the same frequency on route so that even J.P.Nagar areas get well connected to E.City-Travelling from 6th phase to Jambusavari dinne and taking 378 is one of the fastest way to reach E.City as there is hardly any traffic on 378's route-However owing to road conditions Volvo is not expected atleast in near future.
We actually require more buses like 378 especially with regard to the frequency of the buses
Shashi Kumar, Welcome to Praja!
Shashi kumar y,
Welcome to Praja. Nice to see your interests in public transport, specifically in BMTC. I would urge you to go through some of the discussions that took place on Praja.
http://praja.in/en/~bangalore/blog/kbsyed61/2009/01/25/road-based-public-transport-system-de-congestion
http://praja.in/en/gyan/bmtc-and-monopoly-opening-local-bus-transportation-baangalore
http://praja.in/en/~bangalore/blog/narayan82/2008/05/30/bmtc-%E2%80%93-zones-and-routes
http://praja.in/files/Road-Based-Public-Transport%20-v1.pdf
http://praja.in/en/blog/silkboard/2008/07/02/transportation-reforms-around-bmlta-concept
http://praja.in/en/busday
Send me your contact info via PM. We will talk and discuss how to take it forward.
-Syed
weaknesses in model - P
@ ids - You have clearly brought the weaknesses in the Parameswaran model. His fixation on giving a change-less ride to the commuter seriously compromises frequency, in addition to causing confusion on account of route multiplicity.
And this is the current fate of the much hyped (above) route no 378.