Mobilicity - CiSTUP Foundation Day event on March 6, 2013 - my report

Sir,

If all these are things are implemeted most of the normal citizen like me will be happy !! what I have observed is that...all people @ Cistup/DULT are very qualified/experienced .....but unfortunately the policy makers are not that qualified to understand, thats the pitty. see the fate of NAMMA RAILU...or BRTS...no updates at all !!

Today I read that BDA is planning to have an elevated road from palace road to  Mekhri circle to Hebbal ?? the simple question that comes to my mind is why to widen palace road ? - if elevated road is built ?

Any way, I am convinced that all these presentations will be implemented if POLITICAL WILL is there !! other wise its just building castles in the air...nothing else..

Regards

kamal.

Excellent links vasanth. Have shared it with TAC members also. The picture on page 9 of the sustainable commission report here is exactly what we have been talking about for a long time on Praja.in

One of the major setbacks for Bangalore PT is BMTC as Murali has quoted in many places. They are too much profit oriented unlike their sister concern KSRTC whose city bus fares are moderate in neighbouring city Mysore.

In Mysore, from City Bus Stand to Chamundi Hills, the fare for a ride in Volvo is only 15 rupees, whereas here in Bangalore, fare to a cross two stops is 15 rupees. Every diesel hike, they increase the fare by 5 rupees. Even an ordinary BMTC bus charges 8 rupees for the same. I see lot of people who cannot walk nor can drive any vehicle for such distances go by paying hefty in BMTC in miserable conditions. Number of buses to public is also coming down due to sub contracting to ORRCA, Manyata etc.

Two stops will be at a distance of nearly 1-2 kms which can be covered on a fuel efficient scooter or bike in around 4 rupees more conveniently. People tend to use private vehicles for both convenience and economy. It would have been more good if people would have used bicycles or walked along for covering such distances along with being beneficial to health, reduction in emissions and congestion. But, the Bangalore roads and mentaility of the drivers (especially cab and luggage vehicle drivers) not making it happen.

In the above article link, they say a car is an aggressive vehicle on the road dominating things. More than that, our drivers  in Bangalore are even more dominating, non-courteous and indisciplined worsening things in Bangalore making people think twice to take up walking or cycling.

Some things need to be done for making our city more sustainable is

1. More walkable and bicycle friendly streets with a divider seperated bicycle lanes not just marking like being done in Jayanagar where only cars are parked.

2. Strict police action like done in western countries if an accident occurs to a Pedestrain or Cyclist.

3. Reduction in Bus Fares and improvement in services. All the buses are jam packed, despite of that how BMTC is going into loss is the question - It is their irrational route allocation with over allocation of buses to specific routes like the 335E,500D and  500C which runs empty causing them to loose what they gained in jam packed ordinary buses.

Lesser the fare and more local routes such as FDR-1 and FDR-2 would be more beneficial to people.

4. Encourage more work from homes in the offices and modification of SEZ rules to have local offices spread across the city so that a person in west of Bangalore can work in West Bangalore office, east of Bangalore to work in East office reducing criss cross traffic.

Intra city movement until the Metro is fully operational is fully dependent upon BMTC which is not at all doing a good job.  Once Metro is operational, BMTC would have a competitor for long distance operations such as ITPL and EC. At that time, BMTC might keep their fares checked. 

And here  goes the comparison of electric with other modes of transport. I am looking for comparison of e-Car with other car, but I do not have right info with me

On the other hand I would say Volvo's are the prime reason a lot of white collar workers use public transport. The only reason the IT belt traffic is not worse is because of the A/C Volvo's.

I personally prefer to use the volvos to work & back but thats because I can afford to. My point would be instead of using non AC older blue buses for the non white collar public they should get volvo ride at the blue bus rates while people like me get to pay a preium rate. Is it possible to pull this off? How?

* Short distance travel is really costly in BMTC and it works out cheaper by pooling auto-rickshaws. For short distance, BMTC can think of introducing "Swaraj Mazda" type buses in good frequency at a lesser price. This is run today in some segments (Eg: Jayanagar IV block to Jamboo Savari Dinne), but these buses are maintained poor condition. Typically, I see these buses have already outlived their lives, but BMTC is trying to extract as much as these from these. Again, the intent is to dump on some routes. Some routes like "Banashankari to Silk board", etc.. need these buses. 

* More Blue Buses should be introduced during peak hours. There used to be a service called Peak Hour Service (PHS) earlier, where more buses used to run in routes during peak hours. PHS should be run on identified routes.

* Buses introduced should have both conductors and drivers. Driver donning multiple roles (he has only 2 hands, but manages -- driving, giving tickets, giving change and what not... he becomes a god with multiple hands in this avatar) leads to traffic jams, hapazhard parking of buses in bus stops, reaching the destination late as driver himself takes time in distributing tickets. This has to be avoided at any cost.

* There is nothing bad with Volvo buses (even though fare is on the higher side), as this can be considered for premium travel and used to generate more revenue. This is really working well on the ORR (Banashankari to Hebbal -- 500 series) as most of the buses are packed during peak hours. This is reducing private vehicle usage on this stretch to some extent. However, the only pain point with these buses are hapazhard parking in bus stops and drivers stopping the buses everywhere with just a wave of a hand.

- Srivatsan