BUS HO GAYA

BUS HO GAYA
It will be at least 2020 by the time Bangalore has a reasonably widespread Metro Rail network. Till then, one of the most practical ways to decongest Bangalore’s roads is to encourage people to use buses instead of their vehicles. But the middle class shuns the BMTC. Sujit John and Ashwini Y S find out why


Swati Maheshwari moved to Bangalore from Mumbai a little over a year ago. One immediate impact the move had on her monthly budgeting came from the commuting account. She used to pay Rs 49 to cover the 50-km daily commute (25 km one way) in Mumbai. In Bangalore, she pays more than Rs 60 a day to travel 9 km (4.5 km one way) by autorickshaw, including the ‘extra’ that autos invariably charge on the way back in the evening.
“Taking BMTC does not make any sense. I have to walk half-a-km to get to the bus stop, get down at Shivajinagar, and walk another km to get to my office,’’ she says, adding that Mumbai’s public transport is so much better.
Many in Bangalore have similar, and worse, tales to tell. The BMTC MD Upendra Tripathi disagrees, but almost everybody from places like Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Kochi say the bus system in Bangalore is worse than that in most of those cities in terms of frequencies and connectivity, the two elements most critical to attracting people into buses.
Mini Bhaskar stays in Basavanagudi. She says every bus from there to her office is crowded even in the afternoon.
And returning home is worse. She earlier used to board buses on St Mark’s Road. Now, the routes have been changed and she has to walk close to a kilometre to a stop near Chinnaswamy stadium to get a bus. “But most buses don’t even bother to stop there,’’ she says, preferring to take an auto on most days.
Dolly Mathew, a college teacher who is forced to take buses on account of her meagre salary, says buses from her Airport Road stop to Shivajinagar are infrequent and crowded during morning peak time when she commutes. “I can’t understand also why buses often stop far away from bus stops, like at the Express Building stop or why BMTC can’t introduce longer distance buses, instead of forcing people to change buses at places like Shivajinagar or Majestic,’’ she says.
The BMTC is actually a profitmaking organization. But its buses don’t reflect that. The organization even resorts to practices like drivers doubling as ticket collectors, which not only inconveniences commuters who have to crowd around the driver for a long time, it also invariably leads to a big jam behind the bus, as the driver does not move the bus till he has distributed all tickets.
Sometimes buses don’t stop at bus stops. Some conductors are rude, some don’t give tickets. Mahesh Pramanik describes an episode where a conductor refused to immediately return the balance for the Rs-10 note he gave for his ticket. “When my alighting point came, I could not trace the conductor in the crowd. I had to then get down, run behind the bus which was already moving, get the driver to stop and then find the conductor to get the change,’’ he says.
All of this is continuously reducing BMTC’s share of the commuting public. More recently, the BMTC has begun introducing buses with better seats and wider doors. The Volvo service looks to be a hit on roads where these buses ply frequently.
“But that’s not enough. BMTC needs to do a major rehaul, and then go for a big promotional campaign to encourage people to use its buses,’’ says a public transport analyst.