I must confess. As one of the car driving horde on Bangalore's narrow and overflowing roads, I detested all BMTC buses, red, green, orange.. colour no bar. One of these giants was enough to block the entire road it went on. Each bus on an average took 10 seconds to move after a signal turned green (if it was going straight) and atleast 15 seconds if it was taking a turn. This turn would also mean that the bus would have to go to the extreme left of the road in order to turn right and vice versa, thus ensuring that no vehicle (except maybe Quixotic motorists and the occasional gravity defying auto rickshaw) could move till this manouvre was completed. By which time the signal would be red again. Sigh.
It's been two days since all drivers, conductors and mechanics of BMTC called a strike on, interestingly, demand for differential pay. When I first read the news of the strike yesterday I was actually thrilled. I imagined empty roads and myself on them, zooming away in my little black Reva. Bah! Foolish me. What actually happened was exactly the opposite - with thousands of people not having public transport, taxis and autos were much in demand. Let's do a simple calcualtion. If 50 people travel in a bus on an average, and these same 50 people were to use private means of transport because of the strike, the ensuing *extra* space that these vehicles would occupy on the road would be almost double that of a BMTC bus. Multiply the number of people in a bus by atleast 2000 (the paper today states that BMTC operates almost 7000 buses daily) and you have a mind boggling increase in the number of smaller, but cumulatively larger space occupying vehicles on the road.
Sure, Bangalore has pathetic public transport on the road. The buses do not ply on all routes, so connectivity to all parts of the city do not exist. Most of the time the buses are not regular or on time, which makes it difficult to depend on for getting anywhere in time. The price is the only saving grace, because the comparable amount that one has to shell out for an auto or a taxi is atleast 2 times more than the bus fare for the same distance. But BMTC is a supposed star among all state owned bus transport companies. They are supposed to be making profits (anyone see their balance sheet?) and they have won many awards for innovative introductions and solutions for improving public transport, Volvo A/C buses on IT routes and denoting one day in the first week of the month as "BUS DAY", being examples. BMTC has also been increasing the number of buses on the road, claiming that by encouraging more people to use public transport they are reducing congestion on the roads. I was a non believer. Until now.
Bangalore needs it buses back.
It's been two days since all drivers, conductors and mechanics of BMTC called a strike on, interestingly, demand for differential pay. When I first read the news of the strike yesterday I was actually thrilled. I imagined empty roads and myself on them, zooming away in my little black Reva. Bah! Foolish me. What actually happened was exactly the opposite - with thousands of people not having public transport, taxis and autos were much in demand. Let's do a simple calcualtion. If 50 people travel in a bus on an average, and these same 50 people were to use private means of transport because of the strike, the ensuing *extra* space that these vehicles would occupy on the road would be almost double that of a BMTC bus. Multiply the number of people in a bus by atleast 2000 (the paper today states that BMTC operates almost 7000 buses daily) and you have a mind boggling increase in the number of smaller, but cumulatively larger space occupying vehicles on the road.
Sure, Bangalore has pathetic public transport on the road. The buses do not ply on all routes, so connectivity to all parts of the city do not exist. Most of the time the buses are not regular or on time, which makes it difficult to depend on for getting anywhere in time. The price is the only saving grace, because the comparable amount that one has to shell out for an auto or a taxi is atleast 2 times more than the bus fare for the same distance. But BMTC is a supposed star among all state owned bus transport companies. They are supposed to be making profits (anyone see their balance sheet?) and they have won many awards for innovative introductions and solutions for improving public transport, Volvo A/C buses on IT routes and denoting one day in the first week of the month as "BUS DAY", being examples. BMTC has also been increasing the number of buses on the road, claiming that by encouraging more people to use public transport they are reducing congestion on the roads. I was a non believer. Until now.
Bangalore needs it buses back.
2 comments:
Hi, thanks for the wishes, maybe if you tell me who are you I can try and make up :)
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