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BMTC's Point-To-Point Service From January

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Written By tsubba - 29 December, 2007

Bangalore BMTC Media Reports public transport

The BMTC is planning to introduce a new flat fare, point-to-point non stop service in January 2008. The service will offer directional connectivity and will run at a frequency of 20 minutes from different parts of the city. BMTC plans to introduce 500 new suvarna buses in January and will set aside 20% (100 buses) for this point-to-point service.

      Woes To End On BMTC Non-Stop Buses
S PRAVEEN DHANESHKAR, DECCAN HERALD

Come January, BMTC bus commuters could look forward to reaching their destination faster without having to lose precious time at bus-stops en route as non-stop “Point-to-Point” services will become a reality.

The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) will introduce the service to make travel swifter, sans the jostling and endless waits at bus-stops next month. This, traffic experts feel, will not only save time but also popularise public transport.

BMTC Managing Director Upendra Tripathy said: “Twenty per cent of the 500-strong ‘Suvarna’ peak hour fleet that would hit the roads in January, will run on “non-stop” routes with a flat fare. Operating along with the regular buses, they would considerably ease the rush at bus-stops and make travel faster. A service every 20 minutes connecting various points of the City will be introduced,” he said.

The service will offer directional connectivity — from the South to the North and East to West — of the City. Prof Sreehari, a traffic engineering expert, described the BMTC move as a viable way to reach destinations faster as the City roads might just be unable to accomodate any more automobiles. “With the City’s thoroughfares making for a perfect recipe for traffic jams and bumper-to-bumper crawl being the order of the day, commuters would want to travel faster. BMTC could also consider plying them on flexi routes, wherein they could traverse not on scheduled routes, but take roads/streets with lesser traffic to reach destinations. The government must offer practical solutions through public transport until the Metro rail gets going,” he added.


COMMENTS

just another gimmick

murali772 - 29 December, 2007 - 07:44

BMTC's hyper-active PR department somehow ensures that they grab the headlines every other day with some new gimmick or the other. Whatever, only effective competition can make a real difference in the service, which is what is important. I have elaborated enough at http://traffic-transport-solutions.blogspot.com/, as also under the blog captioned "Better bussing for a green Bangalore" herein. Those interested, may check them out. Muralidhar Rao

hub & spoke

tsubba - 30 December, 2007 - 13:52

despite the systemic issues that murali sir has mentioned, if we just consider what this means for saarige services internally, this re-routing seems to be a step towards the hub & spoke model that sri was talking last year. at that time i had argued that hub & spoke would mean more bus hopping for the passengers. instead of the max 3 hops that hub & spoke, i thought grid system with max 2 hops was better. but vasanth had observed a long time ago that the saarige has abandoned the grid system. perhaps the grid didn't work and they re-layed their routes. it will be interesting to see which routes they pick to run the 100 buses on point-to-point service and how this would fare better than the grid. all this will perhaps not settle down for a few more years - the metro has to be inplace and the city settles down in terms of roads and developments before transit settles. in the meanwhile they will have to keep re-wiring their system and tuning it off and on again. this brings us to the systemic questions. what is it in the way the sarige is structured that will guarantee responsiveness to bangalore. what guarantees that it will respond in sync with bangalore and not in variance to bangalore. this is not a doubt i am raising, just an anxious question. i dont know enough about the way the sarige works as an organization to doubt it.

Time for feedback and review?

silkboard - 4 August, 2008 - 06:29

So is it time to review this PTP service approach? whats the usage of these buses? I hear high. But how many people use these for end to end commute?

Feedback on these services is vital input for improving BMTC's routing plan. 

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