Whats on My Mind

BMTC

Its been about 4.5 years since I landed in this city for first time. Like every city this city also has its plus and minus and it also has equal number of people on its love and hate list. You can find people endlessly compaining about various things and still will not settle in for any other city.

And all this holds true for all the metros of India. In the past 4.5 years I have also witnessed a quick transition of bangalore to a metro and ofcourse it started few years before I landed.
But this post is not about Bangalore. Its about a fact that I have been growing to admire in past 4 years.

Before I came here I worked in Delhi and used public transport there to commute. I always admired the well planned routes and frequency of buses there. Though I hated the way in which the buses were maintained. They just left it there. Ofcourse they migrated to CNG. But they never thought of upgrading the quality of service & the comfort of commuters. They never thought to attract the users of Maruti 800 and Toyota Innova to bus. They just assumed that it was not possible.

When I came to Bangalore, there was no need for me to use public transport. And if at all it was needed , I used autos which are found in ample in Bangalore. Bangalore probably has more autos than any other city in the world 😛 I noticed those blue and white buses on the roads , in pathetic condition , overloaded all the time and I used to think , public transport is all the same all over India. Whats worse here was that I could not read a thing on the boards of the buses and they were so unusable for me even in emergency.

But BMTC worked on making me feel better :-D. They started the so called Red buses , the volvos. WOW..first time in India , Volvo’s for Intra city transfer. It was a dream of a sort. People thought they will be highly overpriced and BMTC won’t be able to sustain the costs if they reduce the fares and who will use them and that its impossible to change human habits etc etc. But They survived. Its been 3 years I guess. BMTC reduced the fares also and they are no longer overpriced. They came up with ideas of making bus stops in front of IT parks and increased frequency in peak hours and lots of people use them today.

When BMTC started the volvos to Bangalore International airport , then also people said no one will use it. But they tried and they are still trying.

These days you see new kind of buses every day on the road. You can spot some orange volvos and some blue ones and then the green BIG 10 buses and the colourful BIG CIRCLE on ring roads and today I spotted 2 bright blue buses and read about Atal Sarige service. I do not know what are all these services , perhaps they could have communicated about these better , but end of the day I can see people using them and thats what that matters. One can go Ga-Ga about their small steps and the other can keep improving slow and steady.

BMTC sure has proved that they are the most innovative public sector transport corporation of the country and no wonder they are the most profitable as well.

I never realized when I started prefering Volvos over the autos. And when I started using them I realized that though they have ample buses and frequency perhaps they need more work on proper route planning.

And somehow I felt like trusting them , they must be already working towards it.