BMTC, corruption and ticket-less rides

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So I did it, in fact twice now. Entered xxxE, knowing fully well that fare to my destination was Rs 6. Took out two 2 rupee coins - no ticket given, no questions asked. Next, I tried this in a Volvo xxxC. Was a bit nervous doing it, and must tell you that I succeeded only in my third attempt at this. Entered the bus, and when conductor passed by asking for tickets, I ignored him. When getting down at my destination, told him that hey, I forgot to buy the ticket. Promptly, I was asked for an amount which was lower than the fare amount (Rs 35). Somehow, felt uncomfortable cheating the bleeding Volvos, I said no, I want a ticket, and paid the full amount.

Hope you get the point. You can do it, easily in the regular buses, and not so easily in the Volvos. Now, to the analytical part - can we really estimate the volume of "corruption" here? How much money could BMTC be losing per day to such ticket-less rides? If we can estimate the "loss" or the "leak" - say Rs xx crores per month - then we will have numbers to build or justify a business case for BMTC to invest in systems or solutions to plug this leak.

Perhaps like this:

  • Total ticket revenue BMTC reports (from last annual report)
  • Assume average ticket amount, and average bus loads
  • Compare this with "observation" - like, from my observations inside 333E, 328c, 323 etc, I see 4-7 out of 60-70 going ticket-less
  • Compare the two - average load/amount based "gap", and observation estimate based "gap"
  • Then, some final numbers, and may be guess the per person 'corruption' amounts.

This is sort of like my past attempt at estimating the volume of corruption in Traffic Police's fine system. Wrote that post with hopes of getting loads of inputs and criticism, but it was not to be :). No worries.

Lets start

Thanks to the good work of Manjari/Rithesh/Syed/Shekhar and few more members, BMTC's stats are all available right here on Praja. See http://praja.in/gyan/info... and http://praja.in/discuss/f...

Enough datapoints there to make our guesses. Lets start then.

Key daily stats on BMTC

  • Makes 73240 trips
  • Performs 11.78 Lakhs Service Kilometres
  • Carries more than 38.00 Lakhs Passengers
  • Earns around Rs.258.54 lakhs
  • Everyday, about 1.82 lakhs daily passes are issued

Let us question that passenger volume stat - 38 lakh everyday - is that an estimate on number of actual people carried, or number of tickets sold? I will assume number of tickets sold (aka passenger trips).

So tickets sold per trip would be 38 lakh / 73420 = 52.

11.78 lakh service kilometers divided by 73240 = 16 km,  average length of a trip.

So 52 tickets sold per 16 km long trip.

Assumption time now.

  • assume avg BMTC bus capacity to be 50 (seat + stand).
  • assume that if averaged over a day/week, BMTC buses are 60% full. Reasonable I would say, 120% full during rush hour, and 40% rest of the day :)
  • Assume average commuter trip length of 8 km. Avg ticket cost is 258.58 lakh / 38 lakh = Rs 6.8. That amount will not take you much farther than 8 km.

With above assumptions, you would sell 60 tickets during a 16 km long trip. [60% of 50 x 16/8 = 30 x 2 = 60]

60 vs 52 = thats a leak of 15% on actuals (8/52 * 100).

How does this fit with our 'observations'. I have spied around on a few bus journies. 4 out of 60 once. 7 out of 70 another time. Not that off from the assumption driven calculations. Plus its hard to spy on the condcutor in a crowded bus.

Oh yeah, lot of assupmtions there. But how else can you guess all this?

Now, lets guess the personal gains.

Assume all of 258.58 lakh is daily traffic revenue. 15% of 258 ~ 38 lakhs a day.

That is Rs 11 crores a month.

Refer back to BMTC's statistics on workforce. Dedicated workforce of 20473

  1. Drivers (7489)
  2. conductors (5775)
  3. Driver / Conductors (3610)
  4. Maintenance staff (2107)
  5. administrative staff and others (1492)

Lets assume all this money is going to #1 #2 and #3 above. 7489 + 5775 + 3610 = 16874 people.

Rs 11 crore divided by 16874 = Rs 6500 per person per month.

Rs 6500 per month per person, possible personal share from the spoils from our ticket-less rides on BMTC.

How do you like that number?

PS1: Important Disclaimer - I am not claiming any accuracy on all this stats, I am not speculating any rackets either. I have no first hand information on the full and real scale of this possible corruption inside BMTC. I am just crunching numbers from BMTC, some observations on-ground, and a few assumptions to suggest a possibility.

PS2: A Request - Let us discuss the solutions (smart card, daily traveler credit , rfid tickets etc etc) in a separate thread.