The travel in the BMTC’s prestigious Volvo air-conditioned buses for just Re 1 from one point to another point in the city for four days is seen as a gesture by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government to celebrate its completion of 100 days in office. But not many people know that it was a gimmick. It is believed that the gesture was intended to benefit the participants of the three-day national executive meet of the ruling party in the State. The Re 1 travel did help many commuters, who find the rates otherwise unaffordable.
The Volvo buses were packed and the venue of the BJP national executive meet (Hotel Chancery) had set up a travel desk to help the participants.
The Volvo services from the venue were not only to various tourist attraction places in the City but also to many prestigious shopping centres where the participants could buy things ranging from the famous Mysore silk saree to popular sweets like Mysorepak and Dharwad peda. Over 100 Volvo buses ply on the City roads and the operational cost is said to be Rs 45 a km. Perhaps, the revenue loss out of the gesture does not matter to the government as it makes people believe that it was meant to popularise the Volvo ride. The party’s executive meet may just be a coincidence.
The full story (as reported in the New Indian Express) is at cheap Volvo ride
The BMTC, and most government (dis-)service providers, are essentially 'private sector' operations of the party in power, masquerading as 'public sector', and that's also why they are retained that way.
Muralidhar Rao
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Comments
Autos were hit
Although there might have been an disguised intent to provide transport for BJP delegates, i know a lot of Autos reported very less service during those four days.
This just highlights how if effecient and clean public transport can be provided at a reasonable cost, our road rats would have a very difficult time.
Sponsored "bus-day" every month?
Okay, so they timed it that way.But I wouldn't say this was to help BJP's exec committee meeting.
Time and again, we are presented with these opportunities to see how well this could work. Remember auto-strike, and then this 1 Re day?
May be we can have a bus-day every month. 2 Re Volvo tickets, and each such day can have a corporate sponsor. This month's bus-day is brought to you by "Samsung" - how is that? And we can have celebrities too endorse buses on this day. "Nandan commutes to EC office in 356c" - would be a good headline every other month.
Learning curve during strikes
I've observed these during strikes:
- When there is a call centre cab/transporters strike, the roads get jammed a lot because the techie crowd love to use their cars.
- When there is an auto strike, there is a general lull in bangalore because middle class commuters do not have individualised transport
Both of these just vindicate that if there was effecient public transport, i.e metro / mono to Electronics City, ITPL and other tech areas and good public transport (BRT) inside the core city, usage of private modes of transport would fall down drastically.3-day experiment reveals a lot