BMTC – Zones and Routes

Narayan,

Your idea looks intuitively appealing as you can get fewer routes and more frequency.  You will have nC2 * 2 routes (to distinguish Up and Down routes to borrow an IR term) where n is the number of zones. 

Let us say the average cycle time for a route is 2 hrs (including rest, etc).  To maintain a frequency of 5 mins - you need 24 buses on a route.  If you have 10 zones, you need 10*9*24 or about 2400-2500 buses.  Tha balance could go for intra zone feeders and suburban services. 

People will have to change buses but overall transit times could come down as overall waiting time could come down given better frequency. 

You might want to superimpose the Metro network onto this as well as BMTC depots (maintenance).  The latter is very important as the location cannot be changed as easily given real estate considerations. 

The TTMCs need to be really well planned with parking for 5000 two wheelers, auto stands, etc.

Srivathsa

Hi Narayan,

Very well thought out plan for making the public transportation faster and accessible to people. I have a few additions to your well laid out ideas.

1. Inter zone buses should ply longer distances say min 15-20Kms.

2. Reduce the number of zones to say 6-8 and have very frequent buses which should have stops at every 2-3Kms.

3. Reducing the number of zones and having intermediate stops at distance of 2-3Kms would mean 5-6 stops for a long distance running buses would mean faster movement.

4. The feeder buses i.e the intra zone buses should be synchronized with the inter zone buses so that they reach these intermediate junctions 2-5 mins earlier than schedule of inter zone buses.

Inspite of all things mentioned above we(Govt, Private and Public partners) should make clear assesment of travel patterns of people. How many people are traveling at what times of day? How many people travel from one zone to another zone? How is the travel patterns increasing day by day?

If we are able to get these details, the next task would be to prepare a plan of how to manage the public transport.

Another point which i want to mention here which might seem to be totally out off topic but i feel its very much part of it is City traffic management system. We need to have a better traffic management system in place first. The traffic signals in the city are not sychronized at all. So we end up wasting time waiting for the green light at each and every intersection. If we can bring in a traffic management system that can improve travel to a certain extent it will be very helpful.

Hope to see all these in my lifetime :)

-Ravi

Narayan,

 By putting images and pictures, you have made all of us to think and respond. Without pictures no amount of text explanation would do the justice. As the saying goes, A picture is worth a thousand words.

 My first impression is that basically we are talking about rationalization of routes. You have my vote for this suggestion. This is very badly needed in Bangalore and other cities. Because our BMTC (rather old BTS)bus route network is based on the government Babu's plan implemented in 70's. Since then B'lore has grown in leaps and bounds. BMTC is also lucky that now it has top management who is ready to think and implement out of the box solutions.

 Let me read your posts and the comments carefully before I post my reactions.

In any case, Narayan, Good Job.

Syed 

Neat work Narayan. So the basic idea is, looking at the bus signboard, I would always know the general direction and destination. AH31 or AH102, how does it matter, they may take diff routes, but I will be sure to reach TTMC of zone H.

There are two usable things about the digits that can perhaps be used to make this further easy.

1) Number of them. Lesser digits could mean fewer stops. zero digits could be the inter-TTMC non-stops or BRTS buses. AH, AG, AC, like that, ashtay. AH5 is a little more stops, AH31 is a bit more, and AH102 is the push pull shuttle of sorts.

2) odds and evens. How about odd numbers -> east-west direction, even numbers -> north south direction. This would make a sort of matrix, but could be confusing for inter-zone routes, unless you enforce the odd/even thing strictly so that every FG route is even numbered and every FE route odd.

How about a suffix 'm' for any route that touches a Metro station. H21m, hmm. Makes it a bit too complicated.

Inside the city, there wont be that much space around Metro stations for integrated TTMCs, not needed either, as long as there are two biggish bus stops with multiple bays on either side of the station, and with frequent services touching them. On the outskirts, TTMCs co-located with Metro stations will help, and I think thats anyway the long term plan as per CTTP.

Any locality will have one nearest TTMC at north, one nearest  TTMC at south, east and west. So, a locality should be connected to 4 TTMCs.

For example, say I am in Avalahalli BDA Park. To travel to east, say Jayanagar, I will travel to GandhiBazaar TTMC and take a bus from there. To travel to West, say Vijaynagar, I will travel to MCTC satellite bus stand where I get frequent buses, to travel to South, say EC, I will travel to Chennammakere Depot TTMC.

I was thinking of buses entering TTMC from opposite lane. Either we should have TTMCs on both the lanes or have ramps to allow the bus to enter TTMC.

I was just thinking of Banashankari TTMC. I am a resident of Banashankari. Most of the people in and around Kattriguppe,CMK Acchukattu, Vivekanandanagar, Girinagar, Hanumanthnagar, Thyagarajnagar,NR Colony,PB Nagar pass through Gandhibazaar while travelling to Majestic / Market / Shivajinagar. 

On the other hand, say for travelling towards Silkboard and other places, we need another TTMC on the outer ring road. (A southbound TTMC).

I think we have to divide it further into subzones and have north TTMC, south TTMC, East TTMC and West TTMC for a zone or have zones much smaller in size.

Narayan has done a good work in proposing very neat zonal system. Currently BMTC is experimenting (or is it already proven?) with the Grid system running buses along all 8 directions. Both have advantages and disadvantages. For Grid system, one has to know where to change a bus and wait for the transfer.

I think there is a possibility of integrating both the systems combining the advantages of both. In case all Zones are connected by buses as per the Grid system, then a commuter can easily transfer from one to another at one of the TTMC. Each TTMC will have multiple options of transfers with information displays making transfers easier and comfortable.

In addition to the 8 directions, there can be also circular routes along the major traffic corridors avoiding the traffic in the central areas.

The destination zone will anyway indicate the direction. Nevertheless, it will be better to somehow encode the direction using the colors. Nayayan had already mentioned use of colors for Zone. I would instead propose use of colors to indicate the direction on the number plate. We can choose 8 colors for straight routes and additional 4 colours for cicular routes from the color wheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_wheel) . East can be Orange and other colours aligned appropriately.

Instead of sequential letters to name the Zones I think we can use the starting letters of the city areas as far as possible (J for Jayanagar, I for Indiranagar etc).

Narayan - Brilliant graphics, man! I notice you have based the numberings system partly on my CCTF recommendations.

TTMC's I would have thought were required where long distance buses start/ terminate their journey. They should ideally be located close to the junctions the outer ring road forms with the highways leading out of the city. As such, the location of the TTMC on KH road only serves the purpose of providing a large commercial space for BIG BAZAAR and nothing else. Even the location of the TTMC on the Mysore road is not satisfactory.

Rather than concentric rings Naveen has suggested, I would recommend Olympic rings, interlinking various residential areas, and these can be managed without TTMC's. Whatever, there isn't that kind of space in the city for TTMC's.

Muralidhar Rao

We need better places to support transfers than road-side bus stops. These places need not be big TTMCs like Shanthinagar.

Instead of leasing spaces from TTMCs to Malls, we can actually take space from Malls for these mini-TTMCs. Just like the law for providing adequate car parking, we can ensure that each new Mall have one floor reserved for TTMCs. May be extra FSI can be granted for this. Malls owners should be happy as it will bring more customers for them.

Shouldn't each zone have a mini CBD with shopping, entertainment etc? THis mini-CBDs should have TTMC's in the basement.

 Imagine basement of Forum Mall being a mini-TTMC!

Sanjay Chitnis

Sanjay - that's indeed a good suggestion. And, I had indeed talked to Forum Mall authorities to allow the Koramangala feeder services that I had conceived, and they were not averse to the idea. But, the government didn't grant me the licence, and the service remained still-born.

Muralidhar Rao

I have few bus route suggestion for the New IT Hubs - EC,Koramangala,Whitefield and Bannerghatta Road from few main localities like Yelahanka, Yeshwantpur,Matthikere, Nagarbhavi Layout. Later on few more can be added and transport hubs can be identified. I have clubbed the routes so that few routes cover 2 IT hubs such as Koramangala and EC. These are localities known to me. Please keep on adding for the localities known to you all. With brainstorming, we will get to know what other routes are needed. Still lot of areas such as JP Nagar, Indiranagar etc.. needs to be covered to the new IT Hubs.

Few of the routes are longer, say Nagarbhavli Layout to ITPL via Ring Road, Bannerghatta Road etc, but, it provides connectivity from say Bannerghatta Road to ITPL on the shorter way. Later on we can add other alternatives for them by brainstorming with each of us.

To start with, we have to request for park and ride facility in Bus Depots on these routes. Also, direct routes should be given to attract passengers, otherwise if we ask them to change in 2 or 3 TTMCs, they will not opt for this mode. Once they get accustomed to Buses, then even if we introduce TTMCs with A/C lounges etc.., they will take the Bus. We see TTMC as the key, after having so many discussions since it can increase the frequency. Normal people without having our type of background of thinking in public transport perspective, will not be able to judge its need.

Narayan,

Indeed a brilliant work.. And so the suggestions from others..

I have been deliberating on the yopic for some time now, and these are my suggestions.

1. It is very important for the TTMCs to accept taxis and autos and provide separate parking facilities for them.
2. Private buses are also part of mass transport, and hence the TTMCs must have dedicated space for private buses as well. The existing TTMCs do not allow the public to connect seamlessly between BMTC and private(running for comapnies like Infy, Wipro etc) buses.
3. Another problem at the existing TTMCs is that buses enter the TTMC only in one direction. On the way back (other direction), the buses will not enter the TTMC, since taking the "right" turn will block the traffic in the vicinity. This is true about both Double Road(Shantinagar) and Mysore Road(MCTC) bus stands.
4. Connecting between the different services within the TTMCs ( BMTC bus stand, KSRTC bus stand, parking complex) should be designed to accomodate the needs of the passengers. For eg, at the Mysore Road bus station, the VV bus stop is at a level higher than the parking complex and the so-called auto stand (part of Gramantara Saarige bus stand) and passengers have no ramps to pull their luggages.

-Srivatsava V

http://praja.in/user/srivatsava