Park your vehicle and ride a bus in style

Park your vehicle and ride a bus in style

Staff Reporter
The first Travel and Transit Management Centre at Jayanagar ready for use
Photo: Bhagya Prakash K.

Convenient facility: The Travel and Transit Management Centre of the BMTC is set for operation any time soon. —
BANGALORE: Very soon, residents of Jayanagar can park their vehicles at the bus-stand and hop on to a waiting Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) bus to reach their destination. For, the first travel and transit management centre (TTMC) that offers park-and-ride facility, built under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), at Jayanagar 4th block, is ready to be operationalised.

While the ground floor has five platforms and rest rooms for the commuting public, the first floor will house BMTC pass-issuing counters, waiting hall and other facilities. Tenders have been called to allot space on the second floor for commercial establishments.

The terrace will accommodate around 40 cars and one hundred two-wheelers, a BMTC official said. Ramps have been constructed to enable vehicles to reach the parking lot. Two sets of high-capacity elevators will be available for the public to reach upper floors.

The TTMC, built at a cost of around Rs. 14 crore, was to have been inaugurated on Tuesday. However, the function was postponed due to the election code of conduct, the official said. “We don’t want to waste the space and will start operations in a few days,” he added.

Though the Jayanagar 4th block bus-station witnesses movement of over 3,500 buses in a day, the TTMC can accommodate only one-thirds of this number because of a severe space crunch. “We’ll be forced to continue using the road-side bus shelters,” said the officer. The centre, with ground plus two floors, is built on 37 guntas of land, each floor having a carpet area of approximately 13,000 sqft.

Work on other TTMCs, including the ones in Kengeri and Bannerghatta are going on a fast pace and BMTC hopes to operationalise all the 10 TTMCs by June next, the official added.