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800 out of 4000 BMTC buses have bilingual destination boards
Written By manjari - 23 September, 2009
Bangalore BMTC Bus language Media Reports Sign Boards Transportation public transport
Only 800 BMTC buses have bilingual destination boards, while the remaining 4000-odd regular buses have Kannada only boards. It is the top political leadership that appears to be standing in the way.
A post has been put regarding the same on Citizen matters:
http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/1377-bmtc-buses-signboards-bilingual-bengaluru
According to the post Karnataka Transport Minister R Ashok, in a telephone interview to Citizen Matters, says that “ordinary buses (which have painted destination boards only in Kannada) are used only by Kannada people”.
Says H V Anantha Subbarao, General Secretary of the federation, “We have pointed to the concerned authorities. See, ultimately it's for the public.” KSRTC Staff and Workers Federation is the state-level union for employees of KSRTC, BMTC and state-owned transport corporations elsewhere in Karnataka.
COMMENTS
s_yajaman - 23 September, 2009 - 12:16
Thanks a lot for this. At least 800 buses have them!
Interesting that minister has such important decisions to make! Interesting also that the unions don't seem averse to having bilingual boards.
Any idea when the move to Kannda only boards happened? In the 80s and even 90s there used to be bilingual boards for at least blackboard buses. Did this happen with BTS becoming BMTC? I was probably not in Bangalore then.
My own problem is not being fluent with the Kannada numerals for some reason. The destination signs are fine with me - I can read them. And frankly I know most of the routes having used them for so long :).
Regardless - the boards need to be bigger so that people can read them from afar and they need to be the same all round the buses.
Maybe some of us can print a bus route guide book and have it published!
Srivathsa
i guess i agree. we have said this before too. bus signs, vehicle number plates are not the place to sestablish primacy of kannada in karnataka. bus signs should be bi-lingual and vehicle plates should be in english letters.
sri. i too have observed that signboards are very small and can barely fit the necessary information even in one language forget two. so that problem no. 1. small size of display .
just an example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/prince_tigereye/3077529742/sizes/l/
another thing, this might look trivial but fonts. when you have to look at things from far, you can only grasp very large scale features and care must be taken that the large scale features dont get masked by unnecessary details. most hand painted signs have lots of squiggly and squirrlies, which sometimes mask details. i have seen this in practice. cant give you a concrete example right now.
but basically lines must be straight, curves smooth and standard and so on. like helevetica font. you can blow it up or shrink it without loosing information. which is not possible with other stylized fonts. hand painted signs are a job for somebody i suppose. but perhaps he can diverse into printing standadized boards using templates? just like they do in publishing?
for a group that boasts multi crore profits, i suppose investing in getting the most basic information right should not be a problem.
narayana would know more.
Hindi is the most speaken langauge in India than english.Then lets have it in Hindi.
But telugu and tamil are second most speaken langauges in bangalore. So lets have it in telugu and tamil also.
This way we will end up in another big issue. Lets leave as it is. people who have come for short trip will ask localites for help.
People who are here for long time who don't care to take trobubles in understanding local language will anyhow crib and look for other easier ways to handle it.
As easy as it is. who cares to be a vishwa manava when it has least relevance.
pandering to chauvinistic forces
murali772 - 24 September, 2009 - 08:57
For their part, BMTC drivers and conductors, who really ply the system and meet commuters every day, feel that it would be good to have bilingual boards.
So, even the staff are for it. But, the minister feels compelled to pander to the dictates of the chauvinistic forces, even after his leader has effectively put them in their place - check this.
However, even while ruled by such dictats, the staff (drivers and conductors) could certainly be more customer-friendly than they presently are - check this.
It's the whole culture, I guess. And, the only effective way to change that is yes - competition.
pathykv - 24 September, 2009 - 10:02
It is the 'take it or leave it' attitude of the powers that be which is causing the havoc.
What objection can be there to rewrite the existing boards with larger numbers and the destination on either side in Kannada & English?
Surely it will cost only a pittance compared to the huge losses being incurred on high-end buses.
We should have an early meeting with BMTC to press our views. Will Rithesh/Manjari please try?
K.V.Pathy
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