Vasanth's Big10/ORR buses comment, and seeing a bus stop near silkboard junction move farther from the flyover prompts me to repeat a point made earlier. Quoting Prof Ashwin himself, Big10 is en effort to make BMTC routing "direction oriented" rather than "destination driven". In such routing scheme, you expect people to change buses, and do that at least once or twice.
Take ORR for example. Each intersection on Outer Ring Road is a bus interchange point. Points like Marathahalli, KR Puram, silk board are already the popular interchange points, and sooner or later, each new flyover too will become one. The interchange situation at Marathahalli is like this - walk a few hundred meters braving the crowds, unpaved surfaces, and weather if you want to change "directions".
Its no different at silk board junction. I now notice that the bus stand towards HSR layout has been moved further out from the flyover thus increasing the effort it will take for someone to come from E-City and then catch a bus towards Sarjapur. Here is how the situation is around SB junction (have marked the bus stands I have used)
Thats one reason we are interested in seeing the designs of new flyovers coming up on ORR. I am sure its too late to influence design changes now, but hope a point can be conveyed to those who are seriously thinking about revamping public transport via BMTC buses.
Solution is probably in some creative designs for the major road interchanges (flyovers, underpasses). We could provide for bus bays under the road (at the two points marked out).
Or, there could be additional lanes on top of the flyover just to host a bus bay. Get down on top of the flyover, and climb down to the road underneath.
Or, just make it very easy and nice for people to walk from one bus stand to another. Think covered walkways, or subways, or slacators.
I bet there can be better designed solutions once we put our minds to the problem. Our job is to ensure that this problem is understood and seen by our planners.
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