HOT TOPICS
SPOTLIGHT AGENCIES
Bus Breakdowns Plaguing BMTC
Written By sanjayv - 26 October, 2011
Bangalore BMTC Bus Analysis Maintenance Transportation public transport fleet
My 25 km one way daily commute for the past 10 months has meant covering a swathe of Bangalore's suburuban areas. A common observation during this time has been seeing 2-3 BMTC buses broken down every day. This includes buses across the spectrum. Ordinary buses ranging from old to the relatively new JNNURM ones, Janti Vahanas (trailer buses), Volvos, Marco Polos etc. I have even had the pleasure of traveling in BMTC buses which really did not have any business being out on the road. There was this one occassion where the bus I was in appeared to have one non-round wheel. It was traveling full tilt and as a passenger it felt as if road had unending speed bumps. Was that a safe trip? The other common sight is on the days I take the elevated expressway to eletronics city. It is very common to see one broken down bus every couple days. It is also common to see what I call non-aligned buses. The body of the bus will be so distorted that it will be pointed at an angle different from the direction of travel. Should such buses be on the road at all?
So here is my rough pseudo scientific computation using conservative estimates. Assuming my commuting trips as a "sampling" effort I was seeing 2 break downs during a period of 2 hours - my total commute time. I cover the south eastern section of the BMTC service area - so crudely call it 1/8th of the area. As a rough estimate, to translate my sampling time to the whole day, let us conservatively double the number - since my commute is close to the peak hours. So we are talking 32 breakdowns per day. For a year, that ends up being 11680 break downs - which means this is equivalent to buses in the BMTC fleet breaking down twice a year!
BMTC seems to attribute these breakdowns to not procuring news buses to follow its plan of scrapping 400 buses a year (see here). However, it seems that many of the relatively new buses are breaking down as well- from my observations as well as from anectodal evidence in the news - see here. The cause in all probability has also a lot to do with poor maintenance. In any organization, maintenance and spare parts are areas for (a) scrimping to save cost and/or (b) inflation and fictitious work a.k.a corrupt practices. These are however also leading to inconvenience to passengers, traffic jams on the road as well as risk to road safety (see here).
The BMTC appear to have a very diverse fleet - probably means a variety of sources to locate spare parts from, limited interchangeability and large inventory costs as well as training costs of service engineers. The roads and traffic in Bangalore are bound to strain any vehicle, not to mention the heavily used BMTC fleet. Maybe it is time for the corporation to look carefully at maintenance practices and look for solutions that can lead to a healthier, safer buses.
COMMENTS
Let us Privatise Maintenance First
Vasanth - 29 October, 2015 - 11:04
BMTC maintenance has to be done in the company service stations such as Volvo, Ashok Leyland or Tata. If they maintain on their own, this is the fate.
Company Workshop? - Think VW emissions
xs400 - 30 October, 2015 - 09:46
Your premise is that under the banner of Volvo, AL, or Tata, human beings suddenly become honest and even competent. All you'll get is BIG bills for replacement of everything they can collude with BMTC to declare defective. [Just my experience with company service stations]
Vasanth - 3 November, 2015 - 12:45
VW emissions are an exception. If you look at Indian automobiles, lot many vehicles would be emitting more than what VW exception vehicles are emmitting.
Company workshops are way to go for advanced vehicles keeping in mind safety of passengers as well as life of the vehicle. There are exceptions for everything, but we have to go with majority.
I have seen Volvo City Buses in Mysore running faultlessly even with 5-10 years of service many climbing Chamundi hills daily being serviced by Volvo running with minor problems. On the other hand we see so many breakdowns in BMTC due to BMTC servicing.
xs400 - 5 November, 2015 - 05:05
@Vasanth
I am not disagreeing with you. All I am saying is we need to evaluate each carefully and weigh the pros and cons. Yes, company workshops will likely have the best and latest knowhow to maintain their high tech vehicles (at least compared to other workshops - but even this may or may not be true).
Finally, it all boils down to one thing - are the human beings involved honest and sincere? This according to me is KEY in all the discussions here on Praja.
Because if both organizations were trustworthy, why not do routine maintenance at BMTC and go to Volvo for complicated problems?
murali772 - 28 October, 2015 - 11:12
A Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) bus ran amok on Kumaraswamy Layout Road, hitting several vehicles and injuring nine people, including two children, who were travelling in an autorickshaw. - - - According to one of the passersby, the bus driver started shouting “brake fail” after ramming into two autos in front of Apollo Pharmacy.
For the full text of the report in the New Indian Express, click here.
And, the following are the excerpts from a related report, alsoin the New Indian Exprss (for te full ext, click here)
A highly placed source cited paucity of funds for poor maintenance of buses. The corporation suffered losses in both 2013-14 and 2014-15. Another source said many spare parts were not available.
Unsurprisingly, regular commuters are not a happy lot. “The non-AC buses are in a deplorable condition, with torn seats and broken hand rests. In many buses, the audio announcement system also does not work,” commuter Ratna B S said.
All quite self-explanatory; nothing more need be said, other than that it's more than high time that the BMTC/ KSRTC monopoly is dismantled - check here.
PRAJA.IN COMMENT GUIDELINES
Posting Guidelines apply for comments as well. No foul language, hate mongering or personal attacks. If criticizing third person or an authority, you must be fact based, as constructive as possible, and use gentle words. Avoid going off-topic no matter how nice your comment is. Moderators reserve the right to either edit or simply delete comments that don't meet these guidelines. If you are nice enough to realize you violated the guidelines, please save Moderators some time by editing and fixing yourself. Thanks!