BMTC gets Bangalore to take the bus…….Madhurima Nandy
Reasonable fares, regular frequency and flexible timings are encouraging people to use public transport
Reasonable fares, regular frequency and flexible timings are encouraging people to use public transport
Bangalore: In his 23rd year of service, Anantha Padmanabha, a technical consultant with Wipro Ltd in Bangalore, opted for a daily ride in a Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) bus over company-provided transport to go to work.
He doesnt have to wait for the company bus and can hop into a public bus early, at 6am, to avoid the chaotic traffic from his Hosakerehalli residence in south Bangalore to reach Wipros Electronic City campus office and leaves for home after 4.30pm, at his discretion.
Earlier, the 15km ride meant crawling in bumper-to-bumper traffic through bustling commercial and residential areas. The commute would sometimes take one-and-a-half hours.
Now it takes me less than an hour in the morning to reach office and though its not an air-conditioned bus, the journey is quite comfortable, said Padmanabha. I am also home before the traffic hits the roads in the evening.
Padmanabha is one of the 5,000 people at Wipro, out of the 18,000-strong employee base at the firms E-City campus, who chose BMTCs unlimited ride scheme for Rs1,350 a month, largely due to the flexible timings, reasonable fares and frequency of bus trips.
Much of this transformation happened after BMTC launched a Bus Day concept in Februarytelling people to leave behind their vehicles and instead take a bus to work on the 4th of every month. It called upon large information technology (IT) firms such as Wipro, Infosys Technologies Ltd and Microsoft Corp. to be a part of the initiative. The effort clicked especially after the concept found champions at Bangalores two IT corridorsElectronic City and ITPL in Whitefield that together employ around 150,000 people.
On the first Bus Day in February, nearly 500 fewer private vehicles were parked at the Infosys campus as some 600 more employees than usual used public buses. Employees who came to work in their own vehicles were finedthey had to adopt a potted plant and maintain it either at home or work, an Infosys spokesperson said in an email.
In the last six months, the Bus Day has seen a 10% jump in BMTCs daily ridership of 4.2 million people.
Its not so much about increasing ridership as it is about creating awareness to cut vehicle congestion and pollution, said BMTC managing director (MD) Syed Zameer Pasha, who has played a pivotal role for the past 26 months. We have to first modernize our fleet, create new routes and then tell people that they should take a bus.
Pasha himself takes the bus once in a while anonymously. On 4 August, a Bus Day, he hopped into one of BMTCs air-conditioned Volvo buses from his office at Shanthinagar to the Bangalore International Airport some 35km away, and tipped the crew to be more polite to passengers.
Pashas campaign has to succeed if Bangalore is to be saved from choking on its traffic. The formerly sleepy city, with a long past reputation as a haven for retirees, has bulked up into a metropolis over just a decade, almost as if on steroids.
Its still much smaller than Mumbai or Delhi but has 3.7 million vehicles on its roads, 82% of which are two-wheelers, and nearly 1,100 new vehicles are being added every day. No wonder then that the average vehicle speed on some roads in Bangalores central area is slower than 15kmph at peak time, according to information on the Bangalore traffic polices website.
Still, Bangalore doesnt have any other organized mass transit system to compare with the Metro Rail in Kolkata and Delhi or Mumbais suburban rail networkleaving most of its people to depend on their own vehicles or the pesky autorickshaws for commuting.
The Karnataka governments plan to build a bus rapid transit system (BRTS) in Bangalore with dedicated bus corridors for quick movement is still on paper, although a pilot is being done on a 35km stretch on the Outer Ring Road.
The citys most awaited transport system is perhaps the Bangalore Metro. The first phase of the rail network will stretch over two of Bangalores busiest and oldest corridors, covering 42km and capable of carrying 1.02 million people daily, but will not reach the two IT hubs for now. The Metro is scheduled for an early 2011 launch.
The wait (for Metro) has been long, but I think it will be worth it once it arrives, said Shankar Govind, a 31-year-old computer hardware professional who recently went to experience a demo Metro rail coach on MG Road, near his office.
At least on routes to Electronic City, BMTCs initiatives have evoked a sense of relief. The agency, for instance, has increased the frequency of trips on these routes and someone like Padmanabha wouldnt need to wait more than five minutes for a ride.
At Wipro, the managements on an informal internal drive to make its employees use public transport. We encourage even senior management employees such as vice-presidents to take the bus even beyond the Bus Day and to use them to travel to Wipros other campuses, said Ram Ramakrishnan, vice-president, facilities management group, Wipro.
BMTC makes 200-odd trips every day to Wipros campus at E-City.
The organization, with a fleet of 6,150 buses and 22,000 employees, is among the most profitable urban bus systems in the country. It is also considered by transport experts as one of the most modern public transport systems in India.
BMTC easily tops the bus network system in India because unlike any other, it is constantly innovating ways to reach out to more people and by providing modern infrastructure management, said Prashant Kakade, faculty head at the Pune-based Central Institute of Road Transport (CIRT), which conducts training and research in public transport.
Still, he said, people in Bangalore and Pune are likely the most reluctant to uses buses as the cities do not have a multi-option, well-networked system of mass transport. Agencies such as BMTC and Bangalore Metro, after launch, should have a uniform fare structure and promise less travel time and high frequency, he added.
Following its success in the two IT hubs, BMTC plans to spread its Bus Day service to seven corridors to make the concept more popular. BMTC has taken on new initiatives such as constructing a slew of traffic and transit management centres with park and ride facilities where commuters can park their vehicles and take a bus to office along with providing first and last mile connectivity from the pick-up and drop points. It recently invested Rs600 crore, its highest so far, to create these park and ride facilities.
The Metro might eat into BMTCs profits once it starts running. But its ultimately good for the public and we are trying to work closely with the Metro Railway authorities, said Pasha.