Dr. Time pass: May 2013

About time I wrote something about the Bangalore Metro Transport Corp. AKA the BMTC. History has known the bus service, then called BTS (and with love called Bitre Tigra Sigalla) to be a loss making and inefficient public mode of transport. The rickety buses that broke down without warnings to no bus for hours and a few other bad memories of Bangaloreans of the 90s were all taken care by the dissolution of the BTS and the formation of the BMTC.

Don’t worry, I’m not planning on boring you with history, but just know that the buses were not that good in olden times and are now better. That should be enough history.

So why did I start writing about BMTC? Well… I was always scared and unhappy about travelling in buses, as a 9-10 year old kid with his school just 3 stops away I had a lot to complain about. The bus would be so crowded, I couldn’t go deep in the bus or stand by the door and not to mention that I’d generally forget the pass and try to get by without paying. Apart from the school part, the 3 of us would take the bus on Sundays and on holidays to go visit the aquarium and other pet stores. I never really liked it. Once I remember someone sticking a burning cigarette in my ear while I was trying to get on. I guess smoking wasn’t banned in those days.

It was probably in 2002 that the BMTC first started reporting small profits. It still didn’t matter to me; I stayed 3 just stops away from my school and didn’t like travelling in the bus.

Oops! :D Even though I said I won’t bore you with history I guess I somehow still managed it. Anyway… So after I joined college, I was for the first time I was able to travel long distances. It was then that I fell in love with the buses and the BMTC.

By this time the BMTC had started reporting profits almost every year. They had increased their fairs, but they had also introduced new things that were never seen in Bangalore. They started by abandoning all old buses and got new coaches. Here they introduced the auto door system. The Driver would open the doors when there’s a stop and he would close it as soon as the bus departs from the stop. This idea of having a door surprised many people. People believed it just made things bad from the public, so we can’t climb onto the bus when the doors are not open? What about signals? Well, they generally wont let us in even there!

Then came a rush of ideas, a pass bus for all those who have passes, it was generally intended for students but everyone with a pass, even monthly and daily pass would be allowed. Then came the Pink Bus, the women’s special bus, it worked well first, but you might’ve seen the pic on fb, men got in and the idea failed. Then they still maintained the Pushpak bus, which has better suspensions and costly by a rupee.


A Lady Driver of the BMTC

There was also the advent of Vajra, the Vovlo AC bus. This took everyone by surprise. An AC city bus! Yay! After a couple of years, BMTC bought a few Marcopolo buses too, these are the AC buses that run on the streets of New Delhi. They are a little cheaper but eww! Look so ugly! :D

You can say BMTC is the Muhammad Bin Tughlaq of Bangalore, they came up with so many innovative ideas and well... Not all of them caught on.

Some such ideas were:

Janti vahana: Two coaches connected (like a train!)at the middle with a seating capacity of about 60

The Orange and Blue Lines: High Frequency buses that go around a route

Big 10: Buses that connect suburbs on 10 Big and famous roads to the center of the city.

The Atal Sarige: Named after PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the bus connects places with low income earning people with the city.

Bus Day

The Hopital Bus: Makes a route around the bigger hospitals in Bangalroe

The ORRCA: Outer Ring Road Companies Association route, that goes around the IT companies on Outer Ring Road.

The 156 Stops On Route 601

Ring Route Buses: These just keep circling around the city. My fav in Route # 601, it has 156 stops!!

Then theres the Vayu Vajra AKA the BIAS, it connects the city to the Airport, now this is interesting, the then transport minister R Ashoka tried a lot of new things here too, like LCDs and Mobile Pantry and WiFi hot spots on these buses. Some of them still work I suspect.

Bus Day: The 4^th of every month is to be Bus day in Bangalore. It’s to spread awareness of public transport, buses won’t cost less, but there would be many buses that day. And the officials of BMTC won’t use their personal vehicles that day.

Now there are the JnNurm Air Suspension buses, Metro Feeder service and a lot more. Another thing that deserves mentioning is the maintainance of these buses. Well, I'm not much of a mechanic, but you dont generally see a broken down bus these days :)


The Only Remaining Double Decker in Bangalore

So the thing about BMTC is that it’s sitting on a huge pile of money and the officials and ministers are not afraid of trying new things. Ofcourse all this came because they improved the service and improved their coverage. BMTC covers... well lakhs of KMs everyday and ferries even more people, you can look for more facts and figures on their site.

BTW they launched a new site a few days ago, check it out its got all the details from routes to fairs to maps and everything!

http://www.mybmtc.com/

KSRTC is not far behind; they have lots of services too, from regular non A/C to A/C pushback, multi-axel Volvo’s and Mercedes to buses with LCDs on the back of every seat, mini pantry and on board chemical toilet! The KSRTC has got to be one of the best state owned bus service in the country!

Recently, Or maybe that was last year, I read in the paper that BMTC and KSRTC are the only profit making Bus service in the country, and traveling in BMTC actually made me like buses now, I make it a point to take atleast 1 bus when I’m in another town.

The contrasts... well we’ll talk about it some other day :)

Here are a few more pictures