Route Search is available on BMTC Website

Its a good beginning. For starters, the Vajra, Vayu Vajra and Big10 routes have been fed in. Thats probably not even 5% of the routes and about 10% of the schedules (buses). I would call it a Proof-of-Concept stage application.

I do not believe that digitizing the remining routes is the hard part. Its more important thing is to get the application right. Once, that happens, we need to feed data for more routes and it will work just fine.

Problems in the application

Over the years, we have a huge number of aliases built into the transportation vocabulary. These aliases (alternate names) are not being handled by the application, as yet. Concequently, when I performed a route search for 'Avalahalli' to "Dairy Circle' (which is my daily route) and another from 'BEL Circle to Electronics City', I found these anomalies regarding the results

• From the existing data, there is only one way/route I can travel from Avalahalli to Dairy Circle - thats via KBS.  So, I should see only one route/entry in the result set. But i get over 8 results.
• The first two results are repetitive. First via KBS (majestic) and  the second via Kempegowda Bus Station!!!  KBS, Majestic and Kempegowda Bus Station are shown as through they are separate locations - Problem with aliases for bus stop names.
• The other 6 results are useless, and its the same result repeating 6 times. They all read "Avalahalli => => Bangalore Dairy Circle (Christ College) @ Total distance= 0 Km". As a user, I wouldnt like to see such 'travel options' given to me!!
• This application is capable of merging only two bus routes.  It shows either a direct route route or  single-change route!! I take three buses to come from office to home daily. This option will not be shown by this application.
• This application is a 'route serach' and not a travel planner. It doesnt give the frequency of buses on a particular route. For example from KBS to Dairy Circle, 5 routes are listed (V360B   V356P   V356N   V356M   V356C  ), but their collective/individual frequency is not given. I wont take take the route if its frequency is over 30 mins.
• If a direct bus is available, the application just doesnt show any other options for changing bus!! If chnaging bus can mean 5-6 times higher frequency, why wouldnt I change?
• Aliases in Route Numbers - There is V10 (run on a Volvo), P10 (Pushpak) and 10 (run on both MarcoPolo A/C and the old 'dabba' bus). All these are the same route 10, run on different grade of buses. These route aliases arent listed in the application.

I will give this application a 3/5 rating considering this is 'beta' app. If this was final, I would have given this a '1/5' rating... This is just for the application, irrespective of whether the route data is fed or not.

If each bus stop has codes internally then whatever aliases comes system should be able to handle. I presume they handle with codes, else this type of issues keep coming. 

@Srivatsava: I agree strongly. Just integrate with Google. Use crowdsourcing, in case BMTC has less resources. Many people will help BMTC, if they open up some portal to update/create public data for them.

The problem with this is that while it may tell you theoretically possible bus connections its not clear that they are really feasable. Many routes seem to suggest using BIAL busses which I think it not an option. Anyway, its a start - though as someone pointed out there is Google Transit. In my opinion, the best such route finder is the DeutschBahn website

www.bahn.de

You can simply put in the starting address and the ending address - and it will tell you the entire route - even giving optional walking routes - as well as the time etc. - for both busses and trains. And it will even tell you how much CO2 you saved by taking the bus/train instead of driving. This is what they should aim for - perhaps one does not need the CO2 meter - but the rest, certainly.

Ramesh