Crowdsourcing: BMTC Vajra Route info database - I

A few folks at Praja are trying to create some handy, cool and easy to understand maps for buses. In the initial phases their focus has been on the volvo routes.

Attached is the completed vajra map. The plan is that there will be one more map/side which will accompany this map, which shows each route individiually in a straight line - showing ALL the stops. Now to create this map, we need to collect data regarding the list of all the stops the bus stops at. This complete info is not mentioned on the BMTC site.

Can we do this true Praja style? Below is the first list of bus routes. We will make 2 more posts to cover all the vajra routes. We need to make sure that all the bus stops covered by the route are covered in "via places".

How to fill the table?

If you have bus stops to add, make sure you do that in the correct order. Suppose I have to add murugeshpallya to route number 335E. Since it comes between Manipal Hospital and AECS Layout. I will add it in between the two. Then I will add my praja-id under the "revised by" column. Since the bus route is not complete yet the answer to the last column is No. If you think the route is complete change that to yes so that we can get working on that.

If you are having trouble adding it urself, just make a comment below this wiki and we will make the changes ourself.

 Below is the live view of the spreadheet meant for preparing a feed for Google Transit. If you want to contribute open this link in a separate window.

Crowdsourcing: BMTC Vajra Route info database - II

A few folks at Praja are trying to create some handy, cool and easy to understand maps for buses. In the initial phases their focs is on the volvo routes.

Attached is the completed vajra map. The plan is that there will be one more map/side which will accompany this map, which shows each route individiually in a straight line - showing ALL the stops. Now to create this map, we need to collect data regarding the list of all the stops the bus stops at. This complete info is not mentioned on the BMTC site.

Can we do this true Praja style? Below is the SECOND list of bus routes. The First list can be found here We need to make sure that all the bus stops covered by the route are covered in "via places".

How to fill the table?

If you have bus stops to add, make sure you do that in the correct order. Suppose I have to add murugeshpallya to route number 335E. Since it comes between Manipal Hospital and AECS Layout. I will add it in between the two. Then I will add my praja-id under the "revised by" column. Since the bus route is not complete yet the answer to the last column is No. If you think the route is complete change that to yes so that we can get working on that.

If you are having trouble adding it urself, just make a comment below this wiki and we will make the changes ourself.

Taking the bus: Pick up routes

data courtesy navshot.

BIG10, KSOL, KSBL - Route Details

BMTC - S1 Route (Vijayanagar to Vijayanagar)

Saw these buses plying on outer ring road near BTM layout yesterday & today.

Looks like an extension of Big10 concept, Big10 to Circle Routes to S (not sure what it stands for) routes?

Surprisingly, while the BMTC call center did not have any detail to offer, the buses seemed to quite fully loaded!. I got bumped from the call center guy to the control room to Vijayanagar Bus Stand (22952362). All were cordial, willing to help, but had no info to offer.

BMTC Big 10 and HOHO service: work in progess?

BMTC is prepping 140 buses ready for ABIDe's Big 10 proposal in addition to suggesting Volvos be used for the HOHO service. Does this mean that BMTC will remove/reduce current bus services operating on the 'Big 10' ? Although unlikely, this would the first step towards the rezoning principle talked about on praja by narayan82 and kbsyed (here and here).

Full story here: http://www.hindu.com/2009...

transmogrifier

Bellary Road Big 10

Information first, cribs later! I finally managed to decode the mystery named Bellary Road Big 10. This one operates between Shivajinagar bus stand and Yelahanka. The route as I understand right now is:
 
From Shivajinagar bus stand - Indian Express Circle - Cunningham Road - Millers Road - Jayamahal Road - TV Tower, Mekhri Circle - CBI - Hebbal - Bytarayanapura - Yelahanka NES
 
From Yelahanka NES - Byatarayanapura - Hebbal - CBI - Mekhri Circle - TV Tower - Nandidurg Road - Cantonment Rly Station - Indian Express - Minsk Square - Cubbon Road - Central Street - Shivajinagar bus stand
 
I have been waiting for this service for a while now and when it finally happened, I have more cribs than positives to talk about. BMTC once again proved that they can be the worst when it comes to implementing a great vision. Here are my observations:
 

1. It doesn't overlap with the Kendra Saarige at all! Somehow BMTC doesn't understand the need for an integrated transport system. If I take a Big 10 from Yelahanka and my final destination is Richmond circle, I have to negotiate the crowded Shivajinagar area to get on to a Blue or Orange line. The whole vision of the HO-HOs and Big 10s was great and I am wondering why the people who came up with the vision were not involved when it came to implementation. If indeed they were involved, why were the details completely missed out? It doesn't take too much to come up with a route that integrates Ho-Ho and Big10. For example, if the Bellary Road Big10 goes straight from Minsk Square to Jewels De Paragon (instead of turning left on Cubbon Road) and turns left on MG road towards Anil Kumble Circle and takes another left on to Central Street to proceed towards Shivajinagar, it will end up integrating the Blue and Orange lines very well. It will hardly add a kilometer and a half to the distance. I am sure such tweaks can be made to other Big 10 routes to seamlessly integrate with the Ho-Hos. Otherwise we will see these buses running empty as nobody in their right minds would even think of trying it.
2. There is absolutely no information anywhere on these services. I wanted to find out about the Bellary road Big 10 and it took sheer determination to finally succeed. I spotted a couple of these buses on Tuesday (10th March) morning while on my way to work. So I decided that I will try to get in one on my way back. Tried calling the BMTC helpline and got the message that the number doesn't exist. I left my office near UB City on Vittal Mallya road and got on a Blue line, checked with the crew, but they haven't even heard of such a thing. Since I remembered seeing Shivajinagar on the Big10 bus route board in the morning, I got down at the Cubbon Road - Central Street junction and walked to Shivajinagar bus stand. Whoever I asked around, didn't have a clue as to what a Big 10 is! I did a couple of back and forth trips between Cubbon Road and Shivajinagar bus stand and finally managed to spot one!
3. I was expecting the fare to be in multiples of five. When I asked for a ticket from Shivajinagar to GKVK, the conductor came up with a fare of 12 rupees. In my broken Kannada I posed a question to him as to whether the fare is in multiples of 5. He took out a sheet and stared at it for nearly 10 minutes, flipped around, and finally said 12 rupees kodi saar. He gave me two tickets of 6 rupee denominations! Why was the conductor not trained on the fare structure? Why the hell was he carrying tickets of any denomination other than 5s? I understand that there was an exhaustive study done on fares and arrived at the pricing structure for Big10s. Does this mean that all the time, money, and effort spent in coming up with the fare structure was a mere exercise to waste public money?
4. I can’t comment on the frequency of Big 10s. On one day I saw 2 of them back to back. The other day I waited in Shivajinagar bus stand close to half an hour and couldn’t get one.

All my excitement around using public transport as a commute mechanism has evaporated a lot faster than I imagined. It is taking sheer will power and tons of patience to continue to resist the temptation of getting behind the wheels again!

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

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.

Big10 concept - Circle Routes are here?

I have been seeing these new routes marked C-1 (for Circle 1 ?) for a few weeks now. Was waiting for some crisp annnouncement or press release, haven't noticed anything big yet, so posting.

Pretty colorful body, so much so that when I asked a few waiting passengers near Intel, they thought it was some private bus. Once you read the sign board carefully - 500 something - you may not have this confusion.

So will all the 500 routes get merged into this C-1? I haven't noticed any route merges (333P, 333E etc) on the Big10 routes yet, but this one may be different - 500D could simply be converted into C-1. Merging other 500 extensions may not happen sooon enough, though we know that converting major points on Outer Ring Road into bus exchange points (get off Circle route, get into a Big10, or a local route) will be the way to go.

Lets wait to see and hear more.

Extend or overlap BIG 10 services

I happened to travel via shivajinagar instead of taking the bus to KBS to reach domlur from sanjay nagar. I reached indian express hoping to get 331-A. It did come but it was already full and around 10 more people got in to the bus. The bus was literally full with just about people managing to find place to stand. On the way I say two BIG-10s which were with more than half their seats unoccupied.  Doesn't it make sense to extend BIG-10 running on arirport road toll indian express or shivajinagar? The Yalahanka BIG-10 seems to be doing good after extending it till shivajinagar. I cannot comment on other BIG-10s since I have never used them.

And I don't think I have to say anything on Blue-line and Orange-line buses. It is an idea which has completely gone wrong.

HOHO off to a slow start

Saw this in this morning's DH.  Not surprised that it is off to a slow start. 

http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Feb112009/city20090211117812.asp

'“We have no collection at all. Throughout the day we have got only Rs 30 by ferrying the distance,” said the driver of a Kendriya Sarige bus service.'.

'Nearly 66 buses in two opposite directions, namely the Blueline and the Orangeline buses, will ply the inner city roads.'

I will be helping the first point on Saturday.  Why don't we do our Praja meeting at Cubbon Park/MG Road after taking one of these buses?

66 is a lot of buses.  Do we need a Red Line (not the Delhi one), and a Green line as well.  4 CBD routes can be possible with 15 buses on each route some shorter and some longer with overlapping stops to change.  The "shopping" stretch of MG Road has to be covered; buses should go from Richmond Road towards Residency Road and Mayo Hall.  Is Volvo overkill for this - all this needs is those Jet Airways style buses at the airport - lots of standing place and lots of glass.

SB - any hopes of having a discussion with Prof Ramesh and RK on this?  This is an excellent concept and should not be shut down because of lack of revenues. 

Srivathsa

My experiment with the Sarjapura road Big10

I noticed that they have started Big 10 services to Sarjapura road, which takes the following route :

Dommasandra -> Sarjapur signal -> Jakkasandra -> right to Wipro Koramangala -> left to BDA complex -> right to Sony World junction -> Domlur -> M G ROad Police Housing Corporation

Route details are updated in BMTC website, and it shows 15 minutes frequency.

Today i decided to to try one. I wanted to go to Sony world junction from Sarjapur signal. I got a bus without any problem.

For the return journey , at around 12:20 pm, i went at waited at the sony world junction (towards BDA complex road) hoping that the bus would come straight (as it had on the onward journey) To my dismay, a bus came at around 12:35 which took a left turn to 80ft road.

Not knowing which way the bus will turn, I went and waited on the inner ring road side of the junction, hoping to stop the bus before it reached the junction. The next bus turned up at 1:05 pm. It did not stop, because it was green signal and it went straight on the road to BDA complex road!!

OK. Now, i know the bus is not supposed to take a left turn at the junction, and went back to the original position. I kept waiting till 2 pm, and no Big 10 came. There was no bus waiting shed, and the scorching sun forced to terminate my Big 10 experiment.

I hope these are just initial hiccups, and I will continue to use these services.

A couple of points to BMTC:

1. The bus timings need to be updated int he web site. (I saw an average freuncy of more than 30 mintes, whereas it is shown as 15 in the BMTC site)
2. The buses should be named by their actual route name (BIG-10-3 in this case) so as not to get confused with other Big 10 routes (i am not a kannadiga, and even though I ahve learned to read Kannada, i cannot read it as fast as it is scrolled on the LED panel!!)
3. The drivers need to stick to the scheduled bus routes.

Rgds,

Gizmo Freak.

Tried office commute using Big10 - a report

8.22 am - Wife dropped me at the main road outside our complex, a Big 10 was waiting right then and there. Even better, the driver stopped for me to save me a 50 m walk till the bus stand. Good or bad, I wonder, but I did say thanks to him.

8.32 am - Our Big10 hits the Marathahalli Railway bridge.

8.44 am - 12 minutes to cross the bridge plus market area, not that bad.

8.52 am - I am out at HAL bus stand. 10 Rupees paid for the ride from Varthur Road till here.

Here is where I faced the biggest hurdle of this commute so far. Tell me how to cross the road when the signals HAL/Suranjan Das Road T junction make sure that Airport road always has traffic flowing in either direction at all points of time? There is no pedestrian island at the center (media area) as well. You got to be an athlete (sprint) as well as a monk (patience) to cross the road.

BTW, the same problem exists at Marathahalli/ORR signal as well. There is no pedestrian friendly signal stop, you got to cross one lane, then wait at median (and hope that no vehicle crushes your toes), and then cross the other lane. Two step process is fine, can live with that, but then, there must be a well made waiting area at the median.

Now, at HAL signal, I waited till 9.11 am, 19 minutes to be precise. Not a single bus came up from HAL/Airport road to take me on Suranjan Das Road towards CV Raman Nagar (office is at Bagmane Tech Park). 19 minutes is a lot of time.

9:11 am - Got into an auto. He refused to put on the meter. There was no time left to haggle (got a meeting at 9.30), so I said lets see. Along the way, he picked up another passenger, and requested me to "share" the ride. Great, why not.

9.24 am - I am at office, but have to first haggle with the auto driver over payment. He demands 45 Rs from both of us! I gave 35 (meter charge would have been about 26) and walked out all annoyed. Belag-belagge, yaake!?

62 minutes end to end, with 19 minutes wasted waiting at a bus interchange, and a thoroughly unpleasant last mile ride. What are the take-aways?

• It takes me 35-40 minutes to cover the same route via private transport. Time taken via the bus auto combination is not that much more if you cut out the wait, and the ride itself (when in the bus) is comfortable enough.
• Buses are nice to be in, but it is painful to be outside of them - to cross major roads, or wait at bus stands
• Big 10 helps, high frequency of operation is the key
• But, last mile sucks, as always. Thank God I live close to the Big 10 route. But I wish my office was closer to the Big 10 corridor.

Recommendations?

• Instead of runing services (hired from BMTC?) from all over Bengaluru to Bagmane Tech park, the Tech Park itself needs to run just local shuttles to pull in people from nearby corridors - Airport Road, and Old Madras Road (and later, from Byappanhalli Metro terminal, and K R Puram train station if CRS ever happens).
• Need dedicated bus lanes at choke points. Wish the Big10 route mentioned here could cross Marathahalli bridge and ORR signal at priority.
• And last, and relatively less important than above: Big10 buses need more acceleration. I don't like cars overtaking my bus at will. The best thing about Volvos is not the air conditioning, but quick acceleration that helps it keep pace with or even beat the rest of traffic.

Agree with me?