Local shuttles and BMTC - Example Whitefield

Let me try a detailed example of how BMTC can extend the reach of its services, without adding tons of buses to its fleet. It involves investing in identified trunk routes, and then in planning local shuttles. Lets dig a bit deep into Whitefield.

Say we identify the trunk routes between Whitefield and rest of Bangalore as Southbound (towards Koramangala E-City, Westbound (towards CBD via Airport road), and Northbound (towards Banaswadi, Hennur). Call these trunk routes, and put a bus every 10-15 minutes on each. Here are the three routes (indicative, not exact):

Next, there should be no variants of these routes. Instead, run shuttles locally within Whitefield. All local routes need not touch the TTMC (its supposed to be near ITPL), all you have to ensure is that all the shuttles touch at least one stop of these identified trunk routes (going South, West, North). See a possibility here:

If these 5-6 local loops run a shuttle every 10 minutes, and if the times are synchronized (not really needed though) with trunk route buses heading towards South/ West/ North Bangalore, why would I ever use my car to go to Jayanagar or MG Road?

Before I sign off, let me preempt some questions. An important point is that you would need this sort of "segregation" of trunk and local shuttle routes at each origin or destination area (Jayanagar, Koramangala, CBD etc). For example, you can look at TTMC to TTMC as trunk routes (refer Narayan's earlier post), and then design local shuttle "loops" around that TTMC.

Some other questions:

• How much of investment does a plan like above need? Definitely a lot lot less than a Metro or Mono. You need to
  • Decide on type of vehicle for local shuttle services. Someday, these could be electric!
  • Create nice bus-stands at points where shuttle-to-trunk route exchanges are expected. In the Whitefield example above, such locations are obvious.
  • Have informative displays on each bus stand, Mumbai like - all bus #s and expected times.
• How about privatization etc? That debate is a separate one. BMTC can run trunk routes, private parties can run local shuttles. Or both trunk and local routes can be private, or neither. But thats a separate angle to this subject.
• Wont designing local shuttle routes be a problem? Yes, everyone will want a bus stop next to his house. But having large parking area in TTMCs will keep lazy buggers happy - come, park and ride if you dont want to walk at all.
• What about Yelli Idira? Well, if the frequencies are high enough, you don't really need it. Whats a 10 minute wait? You anyway spend that much time trying to find parking near MG Road or Jayanagar 4th block.