Building bus stands on the outskirts of a city is a concept which has been widely developed throughout Tamil Nadu. None of the inter-state buses today enter the interiors of towns like Madurai, Tirunelveli, Dharmapuri and even Chennai has its bus stand quite far away from the main city centre though the city has expanded beyond the present bus stand. Why shouldn't Bangalore adopt this plan as well?
Recently, a new terminal at Baiyyappanahalli has been opened which supposedly can handle 500 buses. The Satellite bus station on Mysore road was opened about 5 years back. The idea of decongesting Majestic is good but are the locations of the bus stands appropriate? Today, the satellite bus station is one of the major cause for traffic problems on Mysore road. A lot of road space is occupied by TN buses which ply almost empty on these roads.
Bus stands have to be built on Mysore road, Hosur Road, Old Madras Road, Bellary Road and Tumkur Road ( or at least 3 of these places) beyond the outer ring road. A separate bus stand for the private buses should also be built just like in Chennai adjacent to the govt. bus stands. Buses entering the city from the particular direction should not be allowed to come into the city beyond the bus stand. We should have free BMTC circular services plying at good frequency on the ORR which start and end on these bus stands. These should have limited stops on the ORR so that total travel time is reduced. BMTC should introduce more buses from Majestic and KR Market to these specific points on ORR radially. This will avoid travel within city limits for most people who travel into and outside the city. Also, buses which do not have Bangalore as the starting or ending points can easily bypass the city limits and make travel faster.
This is just a starting point on the thinking process. Maybe there are some major issues which might make it impossible to implement.
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