Yi did not fail - it was dumped

@ Naveen

I am not making any more demands of BMTC. I am demanding of the government to bring in proper competition, which I am more and more convinced is the only way out.

Incidentally, there used to be a V340N operating between KBS and HSR layout, which used to pass through Koramangala. The route details can be accessed at http://www.clinf.com/yi/YI_BMTC/Index.html.   Now, this was another of those routes with just some four schedules per day, operated with just two buses, even which could be diverted to 'more profitable' routes if any of the buses on those routes broke down. There was never any predictability about it, and given the circumstances, the "Yelli Iddira?" service was extremely helpful.

The following letter which appeared in TOI in mid-Sept, '07, perhaps describes the commuter's plight fairly graphically.

I refer to the news item captioned "A golden chance to travel in style" published in your columns on the 8th instant.

With the increasing congestion on the city roads, the daily commute to and from college, on my scooter, was becoming a regular nightmare. That was when I noticed a VOLVO bus (route no 340N) running along almost the entire stretch of my route. Try as I might, going through the BMTC web-site and even a visit to their main office in Kempegowda bus station, all I could get was some sketchy and non-dependable information. Later, a friend told me about the 'Elli Iddeera' service for tracking the buses through SMS. The information provided on the web-site, apparently set up and maintained by a private agency, was precise as well as most comprehensive, and, within no time, I mastered the art. Commuting thereafter became a pleasure.

Sadly, however, this was short-lived, with the service becoming totally erratic over the past few months. A mail posted on the web-site elicited a response from the service provider that the BMTC was just not co-operating. And, I am now back to my tortuous scooter rides.

So, what is the BMTC now talking about, when they cannot in the first place bother to sustain some of their user-friendly services? One wonders if they are actually interested in improving services to the commuters, or just coming up with gimmickry's periodically to just remain in the news.

There are more such letters from commuters received as feedbacks on the Yi site. I shall pull some of them out from my archives and post here.

Muralidhar Rao

Ritesh avare' 

The GPS devices had originally been fitted on the buses for MIS purposes, particularly the hired vehicles. The contractors (MobiApps and Arya Omnitalk) were required to provide the data according to some 22 parameters on a weekly/ monthly basis. It was essentially a post-mortem. If analysed properly, they could have been useful. But, the fact of the matter is that nobody even looked at them. In fact, some of the people who were supposed to analyse them, didn't even know how to access them.

And, how else other than through digital maps do you suppose Yi worked? And, these were available over three years back. So, what is BMTC re-inventing now?

Further, as for feedback from commuters, how better can they be than in the post directly above this one?

Plainly, the racketeers within are only interested in projects where they can make money for themselves and their masters. Where they don't see scope for that, they will scuttle them some way or the other.

What is required first and foremost perhaps is for us to ask the Lok Ayukta to conduct raids on some of the racketeers - I can suggest a few names.

Muralidhar Rao

Online travel company ibiboGroup has acquired Bangalore-based startup YourBus, strengthening its offering in the bus travel space.

- - - - YourBus, founded by BITS-Pilani graduates Rajesh Mallipeddi and Satya Padmanabham in 2011, is a GPS-based bus tracking and analytics platform. Like with Uber and Ola in the cab segment, the YourBus application on a smartphone shows you the location of your bus in real time on a map. It also tells you the arrival time at your pickup point. It provides SMS updates, useful particularly for those with feature phones.

Bus operators are able to track their buses and get detailed analytics on punctuality and efficiency of their buses. They can sort this information by route, bus driver and vehicle number and also get estimated time of arrival reports and other weekly/daily location based reports.

- - - - "We believe we can potentially take live bus tracking to every bus in India and make it a de-facto feature to all bus passengers and operators. We will be able to leverage the bigger support/network of redBus to achieve this.

For the full report in the ToI, click here.

Now, much of this was provided by "Yelli Iddira", as far back as in 2007, but of course through SMS (I chanced to come upon this report too, in the ToI, dating back to those times). As different from YourBus, we teamed up with BMTC, in full appreciation of the fact that the service was far more useful for the city commuter. But, that turned out to be our mistake too, since the game there called for a "different" approach altogether.

The following are the excerpts from a report, again in the ToI (for the full text, click here), that was published following the recent incident of a girl being thrown out of the bus by a recalcitrant driver:

BMTC has no proper facility to track its buses. Only 25 buses are equipped with GPS. A BMTC source said it requires huge money and infrastructure for real-time monitoring facility. It has sent a proposal to the Union government seeking money under Nirbhaya funds to install CCTV and GPS in all buses. By end of June, 250 buses will be equipped with GPS. - - - The Intelligent Transport System (ITS), to be launched on a pilot basis from March 1, did not take off.

So, even as the private buses are all set to provide the entire gamut of services, the BMTC lot are perhaps waiting for YourBus to make the "right kind" of approach to them.

Meanwhile, somebody else approached KSRTC in Mysore the "right" way, and between them, they blew up a lot JNNURM funds to provide some kind of an ITS service. Though the report on the same (accessible here) says a few positive things about it, I am not sure of its efficacy, since otherwise, I can't see why it has not been adopted by BMTC. Or, have the inter-service provider approaches too be done in the "right" way?

If I have referred to them as mafia like operations here, now you know why. And, this is largely the case with most PSU's (with the exceptions, of course).

Starting Wednesday noon, you can catch your bus on time. BMTC is launching the country’s first Intelligent Transport System (ITS) which will give you the estimated time of arrival (ETA) down to the minute, on an app

ITS will integrate the vehicle tracking system, information from electronic ticketing machines (ETMs) and real-time passenger information and make it available on the app. Clicking into the app can help you plan your travel from home. Feed the bus stop from where you want to access the bus and destination on the latest version of the BMTC app, which provides details of buses in the vicinity , and their ETA at the bus stop. You can find them on the city map or see the list.

- - - BMTC director Bishwajit Mishra said, “The control room monitors all data from 75,993 daily trips, and we have developed a dashboard that categorizes the different parameters of operation to know what is happening on the ground. Initially , we are expecting technical glitches because the data we will handle is huge and the biggest challenge is to give the ETA, which cannot be too accurate.“ It will cost BMTC Rs 1.10 crore per month, but EV Ramanna Reddy , principal secretary of the transport department, says it is just 1% of the corporation’s expenditure.

For the full text (emphasis added by me) of the report, in Bangalore5.com, click here.

Finally, they claim to have got it going, but with a caveat "initially, we are expecting technical glitches". The cost supposedly is "Rs 1.10 cr a month". The last we heard the project cost had gone up to Rs 79 cr (see my post of 26th Feb, scrolling above). One wonders if the Rs 1.10 cr is in addition to interest and depreciation on the project cost. The irony of it all is that a large part of it was available over a decade back at a hundredth of the cost.

Besides, I wonder how much of the info provided is relevant today, particularly in view of ZipGo, Ola, RedBus, etc having moved onto newer technologies. Also, I am not sure BMTC has the capacity to keep it going. All in all, it'll be interesting to see how long it all lasts.