BMTC Daily Pass - M/F Significance.

How does it matter if the pass is resold? Why this unnecessary policing? If I bought a monthly pass and decided to sell it in the intermediate to somebody else because I find the need to buy an upgrade pass or I am moving out why should the BMTC bother?

Why does it matter who is using the pass as long as the date on the pass isnt expired and the pass has enough watermarks to ensure its authenticity?

Wouldnt this result in a loss to BMTC and a profit to some other person

The whole point of selling a pass for a fixed price is, it is valid for the duration of the period mentioned regardless of the number of times it is used. It shouldnt matter who uses it. Personal identifiers in a pass is unnecessary policing overhead.

You dont create new users from the penny pinchers. These people who buy are only avoiding a single ticket, if they were daily users they would take a monthly pass. I am sure they wouldnt stand in the black market every day for a single ticket alternate. Your customers should be heavy users who will need it for the whole month (continus usage).

It is valid for the particular period of time agreed but whoever wants to use ti must buy it from the authorized person. The rs.20/- is just an example. By the way if you buy a ticket to particular place an dplan to get off before it will you be giving your ticket to some other person going till your stop. Absolute nonsense! You utilize the service but dont pay cost. It is true that I dont require the pass after travelling.Eg: You buy the pass for Rs.32/- use it the whole day fine no issues because you have paid Rs32/- for getting the services to the service provider. But how can u give it to the next person when u are not providing the service but being provided by BMTC. That means the service provider has to provide it to taht person free of cost? Why? Because someone else has given out the services of service provider without his permission.

And I am not sure if u are aware there is indeed a market for resale tickets. People wait to get the day passes and travel to their home saving some money. And there will be hundereds of people who do it meaning 100*10=1000 rupees a day is not earned by BMTC but service is provided to that amount.Superb!

That means the service provider has to provide it to taht person free of cost? Why?

Because, thats what the service provider signed up for, to provide the service from the start date/time to end date/time. And its not free of cost as its already paid for by the person buying the ticket. Maximization of the value shouldnt be an enforcable overhead

It is generally accepted that a ticket is issued under the condition that it is non-transferable & valid only for the journey in question on any transport (train /bus /aircraft) - this is printed on perhaps every ticket in the world.

I can show you hundreds of public service tickets that dont have that message. I use one such pass on a daily basis.

I can eat unlimited amount but that does not give me the right to share my dinner with a non-paying guest

How do you enfoce that? How many people take a buffet and share with non paying guest? Is it beacuse they will be prosecuted or because they have their id checked against their reciept when serving?

Indian Railways tickets are not transferable

And my point being, why should they not be transferable? I am questioning the fact that they are non transferable! If I booked a trip to Bombay and i dont want to travel I should be able to give it to someone else who can use it.

Let us not believe that because we dont use a transferable ticket in India it is downright harmful. I use transferable ticket where the crackdown on selling happens in the marketplace. They go after people who sell and not instead make the ticket non-transferable by putting identifiers on it.

Can you quantify the loss suffered due to this resale market and the measures that can be adopted without having to put identifiers on the pass? Does one need to have the flexibility to transfer the pass without being able to sell it. Will such transferability increase usage of public transport? WIll resale allow for people who would normally not use public transport to try it out. 

So tomorrow when you get electronic tickets you need to swipe on the turnstile, how are you going to enforce personal identifiers and non-transferability?

 The Ulhasnagar Ticketless Travel Insurance scheme?  There was a brilliant chap in Ulhasnagar (Thane) who came out with this.  

Each person paid a premium to him which was far less than the monthly pass cost.  If they got caught, all they had to do was pay up the fine and show the receipt to him.  He would reimburse the amount.  All was fine till the Railways got wind of this and they shut it down.

What is wrong with this scheme?  

Srivathsa

there is a system called RAC

This is nothing but official market for reselling. And this is because the seats are numbered and managed to ensure seating is gauranteed. If seating need not be assured IR wouldnt bother. Try unreserved

And my point being, why should they not be transferable? I am questioning the fact that they are non transferable! If I booked a trip to Bombay and i dont want to travel I should be able to give it to someone else who can use it.

There usually are many wait-listed & the senior-most who has registered for a ticket is the one that deserves to benefit from your cancellation - not someone of your choosing. Besides, such a system of transferability has led to a large number of malpractices & black marketeering in train tickets in the past; or buses, in this case. Hence, the practice of transferability is unacceptable.

They go after people who sell and not instead make the ticket non-transferable by putting identifiers on it. Can you quantify the loss suffered due to this resale market and the measures that can be adopted without having to put identifiers on the pass? Does one need to have the flexibility to transfer the pass without being able to sell it. Will such transferability increase usage of public transport? WIll resale allow for people who would normally not use public transport to try it out. 

It is true that the day pass system has loopholes that need fixing - it can be done as suggested (ie. insist on a photo id & write the id no. when issuing the pass, similar to monthly /student passes). A day pass should be issued to a specific person without flexibility to transfer it since if such flexibility is made available, it can be misused as discussed above.

Making transferability available for the sake of a few genuine cases & for increasing PT usage sounds absurd when the reality is that cases of misuse are overwhelmingly large & stare us in the face, though such cases of cheating may seem trivial to some.

I would not want to have personal identifiers on my tickets if seating is not going to be guarunteed.

No city public transport guarantees a seat to anybody, but city bus or train passes almost always have identifiers. The daily pass by BMTC might be the only exception, but I'm certain they will realize this soon & clamp down on it hard.

This discussion can go on & on with examples from elsewhere & counter arguments to support them. It is not about tickets, passes & common practices in Europe or elsewhere in the world. It is about tickets, passes & malpractices that are specific to India, & in particular BMTC bus daily passes.

I don't think it is hard for anyone to recognize that selling a day pass ticket to others is not ethically correct since that pass was issued in good faith to result in some savings for an individual & on the understanding that it would be used only by the one individual for the day, & that he would not cut down on it's price further by selling it to another individual.

People misuse anything & everything possible in this country & this clearly is another example. Europe may be much cleaner & such cases may be rare, but here, it is excessive enough to warrant severe measures that might unfortunately restrict even genuine or legitimate transfers.

Would really need to see an estimate of the losses due to this

I don't think losses due to this might be large either - not presently anyway, but it nevertheless is a leakage in revenues for BMTC. If left unchecked in the spirit of flexibility for customers, the day is not far when almost every pass will be resold multiple times, & bus travel ticketing might well be dominated largely by resale of passes :-

X buys it for 32rs, does one trip costing 12rs & sells it to Y for 24rs (saving himself 4rs), who does one trip of 10rs & sells it to Z for 18rs (also saving 4rs), & so on. This may sound extreme, but such will happen. Srivathasa mentioned about the Ulhasnagar Ticketless Travel Insurance scheme - People in this country find every way possible to cheat the system.

I am sure if BMTC wasnt a monopoly you would see this flexibility from providers

The flexibility is not unwelcome from BMTC either, but as explained, the problem is that the number of cases of cheating if left unchecked, eventually become so huge that it can't be ignored right at the start. Private providers would most likely have built safeguards even before such a scheme were introduced, else they would correct themselves immediately when they chance upon any such malpractice or misuse.

How come movie tickets dont have personal identifiers? Is reselling movie tickets tackled with IDs?

Movie tickets are of no use to anyone if only half the show is to be watched - & hence resale midway through the show does not take place. Resale of tickets before the show begins (without any hike in rates) is legitimate & no one loses nor gains. If sold for higher prices than originally paid for at the counter such as when there is high demand, it is considered illegal & cops crack down on profiteers, isn't it ?

of ridiculously high bus ticket prices..which make the passes lucrative..maybe someone should check on the prices!

About passes..how about limiting the number of trips a pass user can do and the conductor can punch holes to keep track of the trips..say 10 trips per pass or something

The most important criterion has to be ease of compliance and enforcement. It's in that context that I had repeatedly been suggesting a single uniform charge per ride, as compared to the present 'stage' (from where the the term 'stage carriage service' perhaps came into use) fare, whose essential feature is its pilfer-friendliness (and, perhaps the reason why it won't be dismantled). Single uniform charge per ride regime can then, with a bit of simple automation, do away with the conductor. Passes, ID cards, etc, on the contrary, are just creating and adding to the inspection regime.

 

if bus tickets are being sold in black go after those people instead of putting non-transferability imprints preventing non-commercial sharing.

Cases of misuse with daily bus passes are probably already in the hundreds, if not in the thousands now & may soon run into lakhs, if left unchecked. This occurs each single day, for 365 days a year as travel is a basic need for everybody, unlike movies.

For movie tickets, cases of profiteering might not number more than perhaps a few dozen, & that too at certain cinema halls when there is a movie for which tickets are in great demand.

Thus, they are in no way comparable.

Railways does this for their unreserved, I cant see why BMTC cant. Not that it has to.

It's more about poor ethical standards by an unfortunately large section of users. Most would fail to see that this tantamounts to misuse, & even if they did, they wouldn't bother since the savings on tickets is more attractive to them.

In January, BMTC’s checking staff collected Rs 7,64,435 as fine from 8,736 people for ticketless travel; Rs 5,22,253 from 2,257 people for misuse of daily passes.

From TOI