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The Kochi connection
Written By murali772 - 20 January, 2011
Bangalore Bus Citizen Reports Transportation public transport governance
I was in Kochi on Monday, the 17th Jan. After I finished the personal work that I had gone there for, I called up Mr Vivek Mathai of Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR), the people who had organised the Bus Day in Kochi on Dec 18th. Between us, we fixed up to meet next morning at 10 AM in their office.
Since I was going to be meeting the people who had organised the Bus Day, I myself chose to take the bus, in spite of the two cars being readily available to me at my brother's home on Diwan's Road, where I was residing (And, this was not the first time I was taking the bus in Kochi. I have always maintained that the Kochi bus services were good, and have readily availed them whenever an occasion arose - check this). I walked up to Govt Girls High School stop, a distance of some 500 M, and, immediately on reaching the place, I got a bus. And, even though it was the peak hour of 9.30 in the morning, the bus was not too badly crowded (though I had to stand), the frequency of services being so good.
The CPPR office is located at Elamkulam, some 5 Km up Sahodaran Ayyappan road from where I caught the bus, for which the conductor gave me a ticket for Rs 4, along with the change for the Rs 10 note that I had proferred. On reaching the Valanjambalam junction, some 200 M from where I got on, the bus got held up for close to 10 minutes. Just beyond the junction is the South over-bridge, and it being not wide enough to manage the present day rush-hour traffic, the police was manually turning into into a 'one-way at a time' road, allowing more time for in-coming traffic in the mornings, and outgoing traffic in the evenings, which was fair enough. But, the curious part was that, when opening up for the up-traffic, they were first allowing all the private vehicles (cars and two-wheelers) to go, only after which were they allowing the buses to move.
The bus eventually moved on to the next stop, viz Manorama junction, just beyond the over-bridge. Many people got off there, and I managed to get a seat, though, the bus filled up once again with the people boarding. Now, if anyone thought what happened at the earlier junction was curious, what followed at the next junction, a half km away, was nothing short of shocking. A 100M stretch beyind this junction is a bit narrow, and consequently, it has been turned into a 'car priority lane' (for upward traffic only) during peak hours, with the buses having to take a 300M detour to join back at the Kadavanthra junction, beyond the narrow stretch. So, the 'priority lane' idea, that we are trying to promote in Namma Bengaluru, is already in practice in Kochi, but with a reversal of priorities. And, the irony of it all is that it is happening in Marxist dominated Kerala. (Talking about this later, Vivek stated that similar is the case at the Kacheripadi junction on the other main artery, linking the inner city to the National Highway)
The next stop was at Elamkulam, where I got off, and with the help of directions from Vivek, over phone, I walked up to their CPPR office. The notable thing here again was the poor state of the foot-paths (or, whatever, there was of it), a feature shared with Namma Bengaluru, in spite of the larger percentage of trips made using buses here (and, consequently, by walk).
CPPR is headed by Mr Dhanuraj, a native of Kochi, who, after mastering in Physics at IISc, Bangalore, worked in the IT field for a while, switching then to Economics, and later doing an MBA. During the over one hour discussions we had, we re-discovered the smallness of the world, with our knowing many people in common, as also the like-mindedness in our approaches to a more sustainable life-style, particularly in cities. They are very conscious of a negative tag the term NGO generally carries, and consequently, they have deliberately taken on the form of a company, sustaining their activities through a lot of out-sourced research work, and field studies, simultaneously.
The 'bus day' event organised by CPPR was quite a success, with the support from the private operators being pretty good, though there wasn't that much of enthusiasm from the govt-owned KSRTC (K here standing for Kerala). The KSRTC has come on the scene recently, firstly with a few AC buses (VOLVO) linking the airport (22 km from the city), followed by a few more along the main arteries, and now by non-AC buses (brand new), termed 'Tiru-Kochi'. The AC buses appear to be well patronised, though frequency of services is a bit of a problem. The Tiru-Kochi services, which charge the same rate as the private buses, appear headed the namma 356 way (check this), bunched together and near empty ( I was trailing two of them, one behind the other, on a busy stretch, during the peak hour), with the crew more interested in completing the tasks assigned, unlike their private sector counterparts, who have a stake in patronising custom.
The bane of the bus services (privately owned) in Kochi is very plainly on account of the government's license-permit raaj, which does not allow for entry of big players. If a more liberal regime is put in place, Kochi can perhaps provide a model for the rest of the country, since the competitive culture is prevailing there already.
After a gap of nearly 33 years, the Kochi Corporation has recently elected a Congress Council, and Mr Dhanuraj was hoping to set up a dialogue between the Council and a set of active citizens that he is in regular touch with. The idea of PRAJA as the platform of the upper house quite interested him, and he will be exploring the possibility of setting up something similar in Kochi. I expressed fullest support from PRAJA in all their endeavours.
Muralidhar Rao
PS: Mr Vivek Mathai is 2nd from left, and Mr Dhanuraj is 4th from left resply in the picture
COMMENTS
Licence-permit and red-tape raaj in full play
murali772 - 25 April, 2013 - 07:38
The Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) is planning to introduce 20 new Thiru Kochi buses through the Goshree route in the coming days. According to officials with the Zonal office, a request has been sent to the Chief Office in Thiruvananthapuram requesting the authorities to deploy 20 more Thiru Kochi buses for Kochi city. The buses will be utilised to run services along the Goshree bridges. “The move comes in the wake of the recent High Court order giving the green signal to the KSRTC to operate 22 stage carriage services through the Goshree bridge immediately. We hope to get the buses soon,” Amvujash, Inspector with the Zonal office, Ernakulam, said. The Ernakulam depot could not re-route the existing buses through the Goshree as the buses already have a heavy patronage within the city, he said.
Another facet of the licence-permit raaj
murali772 - 25 April, 2013 - 07:58
Finally, share taxis, a solution to the travel woes, is becoming a reality in Kochi. The Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) is set to issue permits for share taxis soon.
Identical scene in West Bengal too
murali772 - 7 August, 2013 - 10:00
"We are now fighting for our survival in the trade. We urged the government to take a decision within August 9 for hike in bus fares, otherwise we shall announce our next course of action the next day," JCBS General Secretary Sadhan Das said after his meeting with the minister yesterday.
Since the bus fare hike last time, Das said there was a hike in diesel price by Rs 19 per litre in nine instalments. "But the bus operators are yet to get any hike in bus fares despite their cooperation with state government," he said.
Stating that 30 per cent of the 35,000 buses in the state under the JCBS had already withdrawn vehicles failing to run the fleet properly, Das said more buses were likely to be withdrawn if there was no hike in bus fares immediately.
The minister, however, said the state government would soon deploy 600 to 700 Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) buses in different routes to cope with the situation.
For the full report in the Business Standard, click here.
Same dog in the manger attitude of the government, as in Kerala - check my post of the 31st Oct, '12 above. It had to be, right? With both the states having been under Commy rule for such long periods, apparently, the public in these states can't think of anything other than the government doing everything for them. But, why are the people in the non-Commy states too still stuck in Nehruvial Socialist mode?
murali772 - 20 September, 2013 - 13:30
Trade unions have had a major say in crippling KSRTC by overloading it with such manpower flab that an arterial thrombosis is on the cards, unless the government is bold enough to go in for immediate surgical invention. By no means is trade unionism in this context synonymous with the Left but the damage has been wreaked by political heavyweights from Congress and its ally who have used KSRTC to dole out jobs to their sidekicks. Surely, professionalism has to take precedence over cronyism while running the corporation.
For the full text of the editorial in the New Indian Express, click here.
This is an affliction not limited just to Kerala, but to almost all states across the country. And, the only way out can be through facilitation of effective competition from reputed private players. But, unfortunately, even the efforts of the likes of Shiela Dikshit, who successfully carried out opening up of power distribution to private players (check this), has not only been rather lackadaisical, when it came to bus services, but even ominous, with the likes of Ponty Chaddha (he died subsequently) entering the field - check this. Apparently, even in today's world, people think that pursuing such a line would be politically incorrect.
murali772 - 31 October, 2012 - 13:53
The availability of public transport has further been reduced because soon after the KSRTC launched its 50 Thiru-Kochi city services, 76 private buses surrendered their city permits citing feasibility issues. Twenty private buses plying to Aluva surrendered their permits, of which eight were in the Aluva-Fort Kochi route alone. But the KSRTC failed to step in with its Thiru-Kochi services in these routes.
- - - The public transport in Kochi might get even worse thanks to a notification issued by the State government in July 2009 putting restrictions on issuing and renewing permits to private bus operators with effect from May, 2006, along nationalised routes. Only the KSRTC and civic agencies like corporations or municipalities will be allowed to operate along such routes. This means that permits issued after the notification will not be renewed on the expiry of their validity of five years. This fall in services will have to be made up by the KSRTC or other government agencies. Interestingly, though the number of city permits to private buses has been limited to 600, the KSRTC can apply for any number of permits.
For the full report in The Hindu, click here
Quite as Mr Dhanuraj has pointed out in his post above, Kochi had a fairly reliable bus service, operated by private sector players, all these years. With proper facilitation and regulation, by the government (a role that only it can take on), the private players would very easily have met the needs of the city adequately. Instead of doing just that, the government chose to take on the role of the player in addition, even with its poor track record across the other parts of the state, and has ended up making a total mess of the services in the city.
And, while thus doing everything possible to kill private entrepreneurship in the bus services sector, the government, on the other hand, recently went on to host its "Emerging Kerala Investors’ Meet" in great grand style. The question that arises here is how can any investor take a government, that treats the existing businesses the way it does, seriously, and invest in any new business in the state? Not surprisingly, all the investments that are happening seem to be in trades like in gold jewellery, silk sarees, liquor, etc, but very little that can contribute to much needed economic growth.
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