Big10 - 5 things to build upon BMTC's direction-based rework

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BusPublic Transport

What's your Bangalore Bus dream? I will tell you mine. Take local area bus to get to nearest Large bus stop in your sub-urb or locality. Or take your car to the Park And Ride Plaza in your sub-urb. Then change to a Big10. Dedicated lanes at places make sure you feel good about watching the cars wait in jams and chaos. Get down close to your office, then switch to Last Mile shuttle to reach office. Carry your bicycle on odd days, or try autos or taxis if you miss the local shuttle or are in a rush.

This is more like continuation of some comments on this crib about incomplete incomplete Big10/Circle routing work. Since BMTC is hard at work these days, if we talk doable suggestions and sense, good chance that some of these may get implemented. So let us put on our constructive hats and go.

So far, many of us here buy into the circular grid with direction-based radial and circular routes. Of the 12 Big10 routes, most are doing well we hear. 3 or more Circular routes in operation now. Some pictures to illustrate what we talk and understand of the eventual system that could be tried here.

Here is one picture.

And here is another.

What are the big next steps needed now?

The List

Disclaimer: Talk at city level, use personal needs as examples, not summaries. Also, there is nothing new in this top-5 list, its only a distillation/summary of various recent discussions. Only value I am adding is - listing them in order of priority, and this ordering is based on small little surveys I keep doing with my friends, colleagues etc.

1. Last Mile

There are several ways of improving on this.

  1. Shuttles to major job centers from nearest stops on Radial or Circular route.
  2. Regular Metered Autos - either by deregulation, or by tighter regulation. but Autos have an important role to play. I know its hard to do, but still.
  3. Bike Rentals, or Bike carrying facilities in Buses. (happening already at E-City etc, so good start)
  4. Better pavements to manage 1-1.5 Km long last mile walks (happening already in some areas)

2. Easy bus to bus interchange

Improve select junctions, because direction based routing would require many to change the bus to get to their destination

  1. Change involves wait, so larger/better shelters
  2. Change involves walk, reduce the walks by placing bus stops closer to each other
  3. Super solid and wide pavements at these interchange points (tried already at Marathahalli/ORR, but was half-hearted job)

3. Park and Ride Plaza

Need these at Suburbs, essentially at entry point to CBD from sub-urbs. These would most likely be points in the vicinity of Outer Ring Road. Ex: Park at Marathahalli Plaza, and take the Bus, as the area has buses to almost anywhere in Bangalore.

  1. This has been tried, yes, TTMCs (they are not meant to provide zero capex parking facilities to shop-owners in commercial areas), but result is different from the original goal.
  2. Empty Air-space above major intersections could provide the space. Take ORR/Airport Road cross at Marathahalli. That intersection is 120 ft by 120 ft block of road space or more. Think 5 floors above it. You get 72000 sqft. Take out 30% for driveway etc, you get 50000 sqft. At  64 sqft per car, 3 2-wheelers, you can take 780 cars or 2340 2-wheelers in here.
  3. Your BMTC Bus pass would be the entry key to these Park and Ride plazas.

4. Bus speeding at select stretches

Things like dedicated lanes just before crowded signals, or bus-only 15 second signals at large junctions, or "fast buses" with fewer stops.

  1. Priority services operate only during commute hour, not at all times.
  2. Magic-Box etc to make Buses by-pass some signals also a possibility

5. Local area services

This is slightly different from Last Mile shuttles. Instead of variants of same route to cover multiple roads near the origin and destination (like 333E vs 335A, or 333P vs 335E), run dedicated local area services to connect deeper areas to major bus stops. Helps with last mile also, and would make you and me take the bus even for our evening Foodworld and Foodbazaar trips.

Thats it?

Well, not really. But you would need to stop this summary/motherhood post here, because let us:

  • Try put a top 5, and not a large laundary list.
  • Avoid listing the basics like passenger information system, clean buses, stop near bus stands etc. These things are low hanging fruits. If above 5 can be done, the basics would anyway get the attention and coverage.

So here it is, an attempt at a prioratized summary. If there is interest, we can expand on each of the five items via separate detailed posts.