Need an Institutional Framework for integration of Different Modes of Transit for Bengaluru
Success of any city's transport depends on how well are they integrated with each other. Worldover, Institutional Framework organizations work towards achieving this. Examples are Transport for London (TFL) for London, Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA) for New York, Land Transport Authority (LTA) of Singapore, STIF of Paris etc. They also decide on the necessity of transportation between point A and point B and also choose the right one.
They control the fares, schedule etc of Commuter Rail, Metro, Mono, LRT, Trams and last but not the least Buses.
These institutional framework also provide common ticketing for all the modes of transport using Smart Cards. This enables to provide distance based fare system irrespective of mode of transport one uses something like done in Singapore:
Also, they provide real time tracking information of various modes in General Transit Feed Specification popularly known as GTFS which could be used by third party application developers to develop Desktop and Mobile Applications.
In Bangalore, as of now, there is only two Government operated Transit, one is the BMTC and second is Namma Metro each other operating independently without proper integration. Reach 1 althout operational, its usage is very minimum due to absence of proper feeder services.BMTC doesn't want to give away its profit margin and hence it wants to operate isolatedly. This has resulted in very poor utilization of reach 1 Metro. For instance there is no feeder to Byappanahalli
What we need is a Bangalore Transit Authority or Transport for Bangalore whatsoever headed by an efficient IAS officer with lead members from leading organizations like Praja / Hasiru Usiru etc. This authority should also be responsible for controlling toll prices in BETL, NICE etc.
