"BMTC the ever progressing Gov org" Has anyone ever wondered why Bangalore city has so many buses plying on the roads?? Does anyone feel that the BMTC authorities actually conduct an analysis before releasing buses to ply on the city roads.
Everytime a new government takes over BMTC introduces new ideas, we've seen Pushpak; Volvos; Big10; now Mercs are on the way, many more to list.... But have they really thought that our roads actually CANNOT accomodate so many buses.. **An 8 year old can surely judge this**
Over all this, they are sooooo expensive, a ride that is about 2 or 3 kilometers costs a minimum of 6 rupees.
Here is a Fact:
My residence: In Sanjaynagar
Office: In Electronic city (my husband & I work from the same place)
Total distance: 28 Kms
Travelling by BMTC bus costs us more than what it costs to travel by our own car :). In this case why would we want to use BMTC while I have a safer/cheaper/comfortable & a quicker option. Now think, how many more families are there like mine? and increase in how many cars on the road??? Wo Wo..... the calculations never end...
Cheers.. :)
Why so many buses on the Road?
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Yes we have wondered...
Has anyone ever wondered why Bangalore city has so many buses plying on the roads??
Oh Yes! And you can join those people here to find out more and see how we can make it better
Car travel is too cheap
Chetana,
Apart from the fact the BMTC can do a much better job of managing their fleet routing a couple of things
a. The roads cannot take more BMTC buses because they are filled with with 400,000 cars and 2,000,000 two wheelers.
b. True that BMTC is a bit too expensive, but it is also true that traveling by car is far too cheap. There are no parking fees, no congestion charges. All we pay for is petrol (at least the marginal cost) as the car itself is a sunk cost.
In fact it is cheaper for a family of 4 to drive to Mysore than to take the Shatabdi Express. Just the cost of the taxi to the station can get you halfway to Mysore!
We have had plenty of discussions here on Praja on this.
Srivathsa
Drive safe. It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.
BMTC - we need to act
Chetana, first of all, welcome to Praja!
After a lot of BMTC related discussions here, we have agreed that there is a need to analyse and track each and every decision made and every Rupee spent by BMTC. We are working on creating a team to track and engage with BMTC. The project will be to track them, understand how they decide things and operate, praise the good things we learn and criticize what we find hard to understand or explain. Do join if you are interested (link provided by idontspam in a comment above). The work involved here will be nothing more than preparing simple yet smart questions for BMTC, or analyzing their annual reports and accounts with some creative lenses.
Back to your point, yes, we have all wondered about this. How do they plan routes? Why do they still stick to the inefficient looking point to point or central hub based routing model? Why does BMTC's bus to route ratio compare poorly against the same from Mumbai's best?
Some of us think that the recent routing changes initiated via Big10 have right intentions and a viable long term strategy. So all is not that bad. Also, absence of a high throughput public transport backbone (like Mumbai's Commuter Rail, or London's tube) puts additional pressures on BMTC, esp when it comes to connecting peripheral corners of the city.
Besides, they may not have had the necessary talent inhouse to plan and design the routes. They are getting help now, we hope BMTC will quickly re-invent itself and stop basking itself in the "we make profits" glory.
BTW, could you share your cost breakup of how the car ride is cheaper that BMTC commute? I find that a little hard to buy, unless you commute in a Reva or are costing the extra time BMTC commute may take compared to private car.
Agreed with s_yajaman
Comparison of my commute costs
My office to home distance (Bannerghatta Road to Kattriguppe) is 10 KMS.
Travel by bus Volvo (500N) costs 15 rupees - Travel time 45 minutes + 10 mins walk + 10 mins wait - Nearly 1 hour
Two buses (combination of 500 series till Jayadeva and 365 series on Bannerghatta Road ) costs between 20 to 30 rupees - More than hour due to bus interchange at Jayadeva. Bus takes ORR which is full of signals and long waits. Volvos although equally faster as cars, cannot be as faster as private transport because of the rigidity in route as only ORR.
My Fuel Efficient Car with A/C on costs nearly 30-35 rupees @ 13-15 kms/ltr - Travel time 30-40 minutes, but is too tiring with lots of waits to drive in Bannerghatta Road. Travel is through internal roads of BSK 2nd Stage and Jayanagar and not ORR.
My Gearless scoterette costs 10 rupees @ 45 kms/ltr. Travel time 20 minutes only door to door.
My friend who stays near my house 100 cc commuter bike costs 7 ruppes @ 65 km/ltr - Same travel time of 20 minutes.
Easy option is 2 wheelers and most of my colleagues although own cars, use 2 wheelers for office commute. There are lot of folks (since it is a IT company) who say 'CAR ONLY' and use cars.
BSK 2nd Stage and Jayanagar is full of trees and travel by 2 wheeler is comfortable (road widening ist he disease which may sometime remove this tree cover forcing to go for cars). Car on the other hand, the roof heats up and without A/C it is not possible to travel. Even in signals we cannot switch off engine because of the requirement of A/C.
Insightful
Also, lets not lose sight of facts - traditional bus based PT is the real back bone for many cities. London buses serve 6.5 million passenger trips while tube trains do 3.5 per day.
Mumbai trains haul in bucket loads of people from outside city limits and help carry 7.5 million but Mumbai's BEST buses manage a healthy 4.5 million with just 3k buses. Imagine how much more BEST would do if like London they had 8k buses (surely beat the trains which actually carry a third or more of people hanging on to door handles, well over and above limit of safety). And simple kerb side bus lanes in Mumbai can have a major impact on travel times (why support vehicles when 88% Mumbai travels on its buses and trains).
London buses may be of different make, but offer same comfort at same price city wide. Mumbai uses many models, but an average commuter will never notice a difference as barring AC buses the fleet is similar - they don't have this mad hatter of a class system with different pricing ranges ............. totally absurd IMO as the Authorities are making their job of route rationalisation very difficult if not impossible.
ASJ
www.driving-india.blogspot.com
Public Bus Still Carries 42%
Hi All,
Bus travel still dominates all modes & BMTC may be trying to increase their share of the pie by introducing even more buses, such as the Big-10 & Hop-On/Off services.
According to the CTTP report, 42% of all trips each day are still by BMTC buses, with about 36% by private modes. The rest are by IPTs (Autos, Taxis, Jeeps & Private Vans or Buses). These nos may have changed slightly since the CTTP survey, but the point has not.
I observed that even at about 9 PM, buses from Whitefield & Marathalli to SBC are running full, including Volvos. So, I have a feeling that more people are using buses now, or the economic downturn has "pushed" people on to buses !
Metro and Mono effect
If Metro (Phase I, II and III) and Mono is in place and BMTC acts as feeder system to the main Metro and Mono, we would have a much higher utilisation of public transport.
Lets assume that in 2015, the population of Bangalore would be 8 million. Even if 60% of this population uses public transport, that would still leave about 3.2 million using their own means. Out of this 3.2 million, even if 10% choose to use cars, there would be 320,000 cars on roads (as of now, there are more than this).
Therefore, unless efforts are made to cap and control the number of private vehicles on Bangalore roads, no amount of Metro or Mono is going to make any difference.