Auto exit for Easy Auto!

Auto exit for Easy Auto!
By Rashmi R Hebbur, DH News Service, Bangalore:
"Easy Auto!" Anybody remembers it?


Launched a year ago by a private firm as a pilot project and supported by Bangalore City Traffic Police and Transport authorities to tackle the problem of auto “hunting” in the City, this service has got a quiet burial.

Planned to give a boost to auto drivers’ earnings while also offering a commuter-friendly auto transport, Easy Auto (EA) was launched in June last year as a pilot project as part of traffic cops’ B-TRAC.

A year later, the call centre set up to co-ordinate between auto drivers and commuters is shut and the IVRS number launched by its chief promoter Internet World Wide is inoperative. The traffic police is no longer interested in publicising the facility.

Contrary to the initial enthusiasm, EA hardly attracted 200 auto drivers on its rolls of the estimated 75,000 autos in Bangalore.

Flop experiment

ACP Tusail Ahmed, in-charge of EA pilot project said, the department withdrew from the project at the end of its six months’ trial period, concluding that the experiment was a flop. “The programme failed to get response from auto drivers, since it was not profitable for them. They gain more from tampered metres. Under the programme it was compulsory for them to have digital metres which were not acceptable to many of them. Moreover, they needed to furnish proper documents and fitness certificates to enroll,” he explained.

President of Adarsha Auto and Taxi Drivers Sangha (a partner in the initiative) Manjunath differed with the ACP. He claimed his organisation had spent Rs 4 lakh to implement EA and blamed the failure on the part of traffic department and the RTO.

Padmashree, CEO of Internet World Wide said, EA service had to be stopped two months back due to governmental apathy.

However, as an erstwhile member of EA, Kantharaj, who is among some auto drivers still doing daily trips with earlier customers of EA, put it: “the project deserved a better treatment.”