Since March 2007, for my daily commute to office I use BMTC vajra (Volvo) Bus service. I travel from Whitefield to Domlur. I have found this service very helpful as I can sit in bus and relax during 40 -60 minutes of my travel.
Further I started using BMTC Volvo Monthly Pass (Rs1750/- per month) since August 2008. I find pass very convenient as I do not have to worry about keeping the right change and also I am able to use all kind of bus (Ordinary, Pushpak, Big 10 and Volvo).
However the problem is about renewing the pass every month. I need to visit Majestic every month end. I spend up to 2-4 hours to get a pass.
Normally I try to visit Majestic on weekend as on working days it difficult to spend 2-3 hours just for the pass. Today (28th March 2009) I visited Majestic to renew the pass but I was told to passed will be avialable only from Monday. It’s really frustrating that I go from Hope Farm (Whitefield) to Majestic, spending more than 90 minutes to know that I can’t get the pass. I tried to speak to the staff & officer but they don’t seem to care. Some one say passed have not arrived from Shanti Nagar BMTC office. Some one verbally says they will send one pass to Kadugodi (Whitefield).
I had earlier (in November 2008) a request to BMTC (ctmobmtc@gmail.com) to make passes available on other bus depot. But I think passes are still not available on any of the depot except Majestic.
Other Volvo pass users please post if you have any comments on my experience.
Is there a person in BMTC who can help in making availability of passes easier? This will help BMTC get more users and minimize their loss.
ಈ Forum topic ಅನ್ನು ಸ್ನೇಹಿತರಿಗೆ ಕಳಿಸಿ
BMTC helpline? Monthly Pass agents?
There are a lot of phone numbers on http://www.bmtcinfo.com/e...
And, they have a helpline as well 12667 (BSNL phones)
I never knew, but saw just now that BMTC has listed private agents who re-sell monthly passes. The list is at: http://www.bmtcinfo.com/e...
BMTC vs VTA
In both cities I have not used a vehicle of my own-I have depended only on public transport. I offer the following comparison:
- Getting a BMTC bus pass is much easier than a VTA bus pass. At 8 in the evening, I can go to a private reseller in Bangalore(somebody listed on BMTC website) and get a pass. Although VTA also has private resellers, I was sent from reseller to reseller. I wasted at least 2 days like this. I finally ended up going to VTA office during working hours.
- VTA buses are quite infrequent-on occasion, I have waited over an hour on main roads. BMTC buses are very frequent on major roads
- VTA has an excellent website - it is very easy to find routes,connections,schedules. BMTC website was not that good. A newcomer to the city can easily find his way around.
- VTA has an automated call center for schedules. I wish BMTC had continued yelli iddira SMS service.
- VTA staff are helpful with info. They have very passengers to care about. BMTC staff of empty buses are also usually helpful.
Overall, I found BMTC faster,but that is because I knew all the routes. A person new to Bangalore would have had a problem finding his way around. VTA does not have this problem due to their nice website.How can BMTC improve?
- Provide good website
- Provide info to google so that google maps can work out the best routes.
Apart from this,BMTC is as good or better than public transport systems in USAWay to go!
BMTC vs VTA
Dear Mr. Mathew,
I too had felt the same way whenever I was in USA. However, the percetage of the population using public transport in US cities is much lower than here in Bangalore or other Indian cities. That is why we need more efficient system here to fulfil the need.
K.V.Pathy
seek mediocrity; get far worse!
Rightly put, Mr Pathy.
If all you seek is mediocrity, even to begin with, what you get will be far worse! Is it any surprise things are the way they are? The biggest problem we have are the apologists for our BMTC/ KSRTC.
Muralidhar Rao
USA is no example for PT
I offer the following comparison
Wrong comparision, especially any city in California. Please visit Europe before trying to compare public transport systems. I would suggest the following countries. UK, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany. Even Japan and Singapore in the east will be a good choice. There are a few US cities like seattle etc trying to catch up.
§§§ Tweetenator
PT in Europe
Dear idontspam/Tweetenator,
Your suggestion is sure to be lapped up by BMTC & Transport Minister to send a team to all the cities you have mentioned.
Decades back, the then Transport Minister Mr. P.G.R. Sindhia led such a delegation to London. I suggested to him to at least make the Route numbers visible in bold large letters as he and his team must have seen on London buses. Nothing was done till today, though many teams keep visiting many foreign cites at the commuters'/tax payers' expense.
K.V.Pathy
Airtel, vodafone outlets as pass provison/renewal outlets
Another option is to hav a ticket booking website like indian railways.. combined with payments online, this wud b a big hit for all the netizens who commute through buses..
or they shud provide the facility of pass issuance and renewal through SMS, and the passes sent to their e-mail id's which can b taken a print-out of.. the combination of the above facilities saves a lot of commuters time and at the same time increasing the reach of BMTC to commuters city-wide and increase in its revenue.
Time for SMS based tickets
It is time to go totally paperless using SMS based tickets rather than improving the distribution of paper tickets. Several publlic transport organizations around the world have started using it. For example see the system in Prague:
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/97845
http://czech-transport.com/index.php?id=337
http://www.abcprague.com/2008/04/02/sms-tickets-becoming-a-hit
A notable point is this system reduced the amount of ticketless travel a lot.
We can use this to gather information about routes used by people as well. It is possible for the new software to get the nearest mobiile phone tower (already being used by google location services) when purchases were made and if incentives are given to send additional SMS's, we can even collect info on transit points and end destinations (again automaticaly by using the nearest tower information for the specified mobile number).
The passangers can have unique ID card (EPIC/PAN card etc..) which can be tagged to mobile phone number by one time registration process and the mobile phone number can be embedded in encrypted form in the 'SMS ticket' to ensure it cannot be misused.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_ticketing for some more info.
Of course those who do not have mobile can still continue to use paper based tickets.
Sanjay chitnis