BMTC Suvarna peak hour service

Ever wondered why its so difficult to use BMTC. Simply because they are not aligned to the work places. Years ago - Bangalore was defined by 3 Centres/hot spots - Majestic, Market (KR) and Shivajinagar. The shantinagar bus stand is such a joke - because it serves no purpose - except for being a money spinner for BMTC - thanks to Big Bazar. For people working in CBD and staying in BTM (like me) - we dont have a choice but to use a personal vehicle.  There is no bus save 201 (which is badly run) which takes me to my office location. Alternate is to go to Jayanagar 4th block - take a bus to shivajinagar and finally an auto to my office. Crazy aint it? No wonder the personal vehicle commuting is the chosen mode of transport.

Even for the international airport - there is no service from BTM - The nearest route is "2" from JP nagar 6th phase. Hopefully an EC bus will ply thru BTM.

Let us list down all arguments against Hub and spoke model. And then compare them with Grid/matrix approach.

1) Lack of faith in BMTC to manage the crowded hubs well. Two points here. a) can BMTC provide enough amenities inside the Hubs to draw upper/middle class commuters? b) can BMTC manage traffic around the Hub (lots of buses fighting with lots of cars and bikes)

2) Wait time enforced on passenger at the Hubs. Hub to Hub frequencies may be lot higher than Hub to a satellite frequency. So your wait time could depend on how the schedule is synchronized

3) Longer trip route. sometimes to go to point A, you may have to go father to a nearby Hub, and then come back to point A

4) Private transport till the Hub A) Autos: Will the compete or complement the buses running from Hub to satellites? B) Parking: will BMTC be able to provide ample parking at the Hubs so that I can drive up to the hub myself?

Add more negatives to this, once we think we have them all, let us see how they get addressed in the Grid/Matrix model. 

in terms of number of interchanges, the grid is infinitely superior to any other model. if realized fully, grids have max two changes. but sri has conclusively proved to me in previous discussions that, whether it is grid or hub & spoke (H&S) it has to be span all modes. you want to do grids, ok fine, you want to do hub and spoke fine too. fundamental idea must be to make these networks pan-mode systems. fundamental thing is do it across modes. want to go to malleshwaram from jayanagar? go north and then west. or go to najestic and take an an interchange. fine too. but the fundamental idea should be that mode does not matter. you could take bus, train and the mono or a mixture of these enroute. breaking this problem mode wise is a sure shot recipe for disaster. we now have a plan for metro, even if it takes awhile to develop, BMTC should concentrate on maturing its services to complement that plan. in terms of entropy due to traffic, bmtc cannot do grids becoz grids are more chaotic than hub and spoke. one can talk about grids, and direction based navigation, but if you cannot achieve any reliability metrics then it makes no difference to bangalore. going north from BSK to hebbal if you cannot establish any reliability metric then a theoretical model, irrespctive of its theoretical merits has no meaning. bogota ands its grid is sexy. but what is bogota's map and what is bangalore's map? bogota looks like this. the city is land locked by the hills and is longer than it is wide. so a network like this makes sense: http://www.surumbo.com/si... but what about bangalore and "bruhat" bangalore? its all cirular. i mean we cannot build ntworks in variance to our geography and our science. it is important to realize grids and H&S work in different environments. grids work in direction based navigation and H&S works in landmark based navigation. fundamental issue, is we as a people are used to landmark based navigation as opposed to direction based navigation. how do we give directions? straight ge hogi, lefaT ge tiragidre , doDDa aaladmara sigutte, alli matte lefaT ge tirugidre marammana guDi sigutte ... having spent a significant amount of my adult life on navigating robots (not much different from people who dont know directions), i must submit that relative navigation is an uber efficient and robust way for local planning and navigation. this has got nothing to do with our cultural short commings. i bet naveen, who navigates ships, which are essential blind by themselves, can vouch for this. the advantages of generic navigation vs benefits of local navigation. i dont care which waters you are navigating, you hit a local pocket you need local expertise.

should not be based on ticket sales bcoz it will only tell you about existing network, right? also with grids, they are talking about direction based transit. not point to point. point to point is still hub and spoke.

...as opposed to Hub and Spoke? How about that? I'd this idea elsewhere a while back. A high-speed "wheel"-shaped route all along ORR - possibly a metro/mono rail. Then, from multiple points on ORR, have BMTC connect the city areas inwards (and outwards). Say you want to travel from Jayanagar to R.T. Nagar: Catch a BMTC to nearest "wheel" station on ORR. Catch metro/mono and go over till Hebbal on ORR and from there catch another BMTC. Ofcourse, as some of you said, multiple modes have to be truely integrated into a single system.

This also helps in decongesting central areas.

Maybe this is what s_yajaman implicitly said in the original post.

 

I hsve one suggestion

can we praja members

sit down

get the various routes from BMTC

use google map and alter these routes for best connectivity and minimum time

take up these routes and implement these routes as signal free route with BBMP / BMRDA

make sure that BMTC runs buses on these routes

 

Srinath Heragu

Pradeep, if there are private AND public buses are running on the routes you mentioned, it means that there are enough commuters for this to be economically viable. In that case it is not a good idea to give BMTC exclusive rights and hence monopoly. That would only worsen the service levels. The ideal thing would be to think of an alternative like metro rail or if that is not viable, to enforce regulations to ensure safety and let the private guys come in. Then the competition would ensure the best for the consumers. I guess Murali Sir wrote about this a while ago. Competition is good for the consumers. Could you imagine the state of mobile telephony in India if BSNL was given the exclusive rights? -Shastri

ok sri, understood. sure but if we increase the number of interchanges, and at each interchange there is a wait period it becomes highly unattractive. for long hauls two changes is fine. but the problem is medium ranges. (about 45% trips < 9 kms) i think we are all talking around the same point. need to get it sorted out properly. terminology is not important, but i am unable to understand a few things on the thread. main grids, local grids fine. but how does it work? need to sit down and read this thread properly.

If we have multiple corporate private bus companies running their services with few guidelines and discipline that needs to be followed, it is welcome move. But, the kind of private vehicles that ply on Hosur road or few Tempo Travellers that ply on the ring road or the buses near Banashankari are all run by unprofessional driver,conductor and cleaner combination. Those colorful crowded buses with distinct lighting inside, the cleaner / conductor simply tapping the bus and making the side vehicles afraid, especially 2 wheelers, always glowing indicators, that harsh and crazy horn, etc. used by private buses makes travel in private buses a horrible experience. What we need is a professional private bus operator like VRL, Sharma etc.. to operate the private buses.

Myself and Murali Sir are on a constant argument of privatization. I feel it is OK if a corporate controlled operator is operating the buses with strict guidelines. Airline privatization improved aviation field mainly because it is corporate controlled. Who will get into an unnamed private plane without any corporate brand?

It is a good idea to have local buses going to the heart of localities and connect it into main road routes like Bannerghatta Road with frequent buses. These routes operating license can be bidded to corporate level private operators.

 

You couldn't have put it better. Due to my relentless criticism, BMTC invited me to become the co-Chairman of their Commuter Comfort Task Force. After some 2 years of seeing the organisation from within, I am all the more convinced that they can become customer oriented, only, and only, if there's effective competition from organised private sector players.

So, folks, let's not waste time, any more. Let's build up a constituency with that objective in mind, gather momentum, and launch a PIL, if required. Meanwhile, let's have the political parties include it in their manifesto's.

Muralidhar Rao

Srivathsa,

Do look up the case study on route and frequency rationalisation (I have made a reference to Singapore bus routes as well)

http://www.praja.in/pune/discuss/2008/07/rationalising-and-reforming-bus-routes-case-example

ASJ

Let me take the liberty of clarifying my earlier suggestion of inviting project proposal on BMTC route rationalization. We all agree that BMTC, Bangalore in particular needs to have its public transport rationalized its routes. If I am not wrong, in past last 4 decades BMTC has not done anything radical except for VV Airport service and its route number changes in 70s. BMTC can not go on adding new routes without rationalizing its network.

 BMTC management is busy with their mundane duties. We all are busy with jobs, industry and some indulgence in social initiatives from various forums like Praja, BC etc. That leaves very little bandwidth on Praja and BMTC management for this serious job. My suggestion is to get some fresh and young minds to work on the solution with minute possible details. They can take the serious and good initiatives from Narayan, Murali Sir, ASJ and other praja members on the thread forward.

http://praja.in/bangalore/blog/narayan82/2008/05/30/bmtc-zones-and-routes

In  that situation this is what I am proposing:

1. Praja with the help of Industry and business chambers invites a comprehensive solution proposal to rationalize the BMTC routes.
2. Praja and BMTC to set clear objectives.
3. Proposals to be serious, scientific, technical and viable.
4. The participants can take the works of Narayan and ASJ as a basis for further works. 
5. Open for Students in Engineering/University/management courses. They can take assistance from experts.
6. Time limit of 3-5 months.
7. Selection by a panel from Praja, BMTC, business & industry chambers and experts in public transportation.
8. Suggestion for 100k, 50k and 25k prize money for first 3 best proposals.
9. Mandatory to record the current information on present routes, coverage, ridership, peak times, popular routes, upcoming areas, future demands etc.

Looking forward to have some serious discussion on this proposal. We need to take our first meeting with BMTC MD forward and convert into some doable action.

Note, as I had mentioned in my earlier post, this is to be taken on parallely with engaging BMTC management for implementing this work.

Syed

 

Syed-bhai

Let it be three-pronged strategy, with me heading the third prong - for demanding competition for BMTC. Please also read

http://bangalore.praja.in/blog/murali772/2008/10/08/ksrtc-out-kill-even-existing-competition

Let's have a bet as to which will work.

Now, I was the Co-Chairman of BMTC's CCTF (Commuter Comfort Task Force), and spend a good part of two years to come up with a report emphasising largely 'route rationalisation'. Some bit of the proposals were implemented, but in a very half-hearted way, which only went on to make things worse. Long before I worked on it, there was a proposal from a certain Mr Parameswaran (retired fleet manager, HAL), which was also accepted by the BMTC board. It had its own merits. But, with all that, it was never implemented. Mr P is still pursuing it, and quite doggedly too. In fact, he went to on to present it to the Transportation Study Dept of some Ivy League college in the US/ UK, where his son/ s-i-l apparently is on the faculty, and he claims it was well received. The efforts have all largely gone waste.

As compared to that, if a TVS or TATA were running the bus services, they would have taken up all of them, and improved further. Perhaps, I would have had a job also, except of course, if Doc ASJ decides to upset the apple-cart.

So, do you still want to take me on with the bet?

Muralidhar Rao