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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 - 26 September, 2009 - 17:50
But Naveen's post got my goat a bit. I tried hard to stick to the straight and narrow, but this is a bit like a red flag to a bull 
I will request a delete on my post.
Srivathsa
idontspam - 26 September, 2009 - 18:08
any case, in terms of form, i am not really happy with LED boards.
Meh!
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
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
cross post from churumuri:
me:
ptl et al…
it will be great if you can think about this problem:
http://praja.in/en/blog/manjari/2009/09/23/out-4000-bmtc-buses-800-buses-have-bilingual-destination-boards#comment-17652briefly. board sizes for buses are small. plus for the same word fidelity (say ability to read words from a given distance) kannada words need larger letter sizes bcoz of strokes and vottus etc etc…
so typically in order to fit byaaTarayanapura’ into a small board size they reduce letter size which makes it illegible.
so need simple and intuitive short forms for place names to be used in bus sign boards. any ideas?
PTL:
I am not for further deforming of Kannada names, toponyms or otherwise, but I also know this is impractical. If and when texting becomes standard in Kannada, we will see as many syllables clipped as we see in English.
In any case, unless we are impaired, just how long does it take to read the destination board? What is confusing is not being able to tell which route the bus will take.
me:
ptl annore ., i am not saying short forms to be cool and be in with it. i have very sharaNa reasons for it.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2571/3952284042_130b24d2bd.jpg
i actually tried fitting byaaTaraayanapura in that space with that letter size. not possible.
if you ever get a chance watch a documentary called helevetica. that is the most used ‘font’ in all world. it was designed for a specific utilitarian purpose. you should see the amount of thinking from usability and utility angles that went into designing it. one of the ‘design points’ was that you should be able to scale the letter size and still be legible.
the problem is not just time. for bus signs, especially the way bustops work in KA (multiple buses arrive simultaneously to the same physical location), ability to identify buses from far and early is crucial. people will then organize themselves that much early in preparation, and entry and exit is that much more organized/systematic.
order is created by paying attention to all these little ‘inconsequential’ things. order does not happen by sitting lamenting about how our people are uncontrollable, undisciplined etc etc. and how chinese are so much nicer to control. that is bullshit. anywhere you go around the world, you will see that order exists only where there is a system to enforce it or help establish it. and for that all sort of things need to be done.
anycase back to my original point. completely utilitarian reasons.
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