No incentives to use public transport

No incentives to use public transport

Anil Kumar Sastry and Swathi Shivanand

BANGALORE: While we criticise the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Service for their dismal services and their inability to boost usage of public transport, are we missing the bigger picture? Are our policies and programmes geared towards encouraging public transport?

Unfortunately not, according to Kathyayini Chamraj of Civic Bangalore. “People can park for free in public spaces. They are not charged for using them. Nothing has happened about the congestion tax yet. Where are the incentives to use public transport?” she asked.

There are no measures in place to aid public transport to become more efficient either. “There is no policy to segregate different types of traffic,” she said. Figures available show that BMTC buses transport around 18 lakh people a day, 56 per cent of the moving population, while private vehicles transport around 20 per cent. On the other hand, buses occupy only 2 per cent of the road space and private vehicles occupy more than 60 per cent of the available space.
Disconnect

The disconnect between programmes implemented and policies framed becomes apparent in the chaos on road. The National Urban Transport Policy, while not binding, was framed so that State governments refer to the guidelines set out while planning their traffic-related programmes.

While the policy framed by the Centre recommends that people, instead of vehicles, be made the focus of the transport plans, recently civic groups had raised concerns about the current widening of seven roads only encouraging private transport. The plans, as they are now, only involve widening the roads and do not contain details about dedicated lanes for buses, a must to encourage use of public transport.

If dedicated lanes are provided resulting in an increase in the average speed of buses, an equal percentage of people will come to the BMTC fold, according to Upendra Tripathy, BMTC Managing Director.

On the failure of BMTC to provide adequate services, he said: “It is not the question whether BMTC has succeeded in providing a decent public transport system for Bangalore. It is a question whether Bangalore as a city has been able to evolve an infallible public transport system.”
Social gains

Mr. Tripathy said the problem lay with individualistic approach – individual gains and losses – perceived by people.

A vigorous public transport system would bring down the number of private vehicles on roads, resulting in less consumption of fuel, reduced air pollution and reduce the number of accidents.

The resultant savings in terms of money and health would be the gain for society and nobody had thought about it.

According to him, public transport in the country was bogged down by the tax regime and lack of capital support from the Government.