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If BMTC were to bid for this project, it will be a cake for them - both in terms of qualifying for the project, as well as operating it.

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SB,

Be careful what you want.  You might get it.  :)  Last time it was Hyderabad's Metro that we were supposed to learn from :)

Can you identify about 5 operational issues in BMTC that arise out of it being a govt held company and not because of anything else.  There should be a fairly strong causative relationship between govt ownership and those issues. 

E.g.

a. Revenue loss at ticketing.  Private company means that conductor can get fired if he is caught stealing.  Or that private company will mean adoption of cashless transactions at ticketing via card readers+cards.  Or that private companies will pay their conductors/drivers better so that they don't need to do it. 

b. Coverage ---

c. ...

Srivathsa

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This concept seems to be an extension of "Licence Raj".

Rithesh - India's famous "License Raj" is commonly associated with the unneccessarily large chain of requirements involving multiple govt agencies wherby prospective applicants had to spend months, if not years & pay bribes at multiple points to be conferred licenses for operation. I dont think this will be case with the Punjab public transport initiative.

Regulation by government is very much necessary, particularly for operation of public transport since safety & lives are involved + it is a social service sector which is the reponsibility of the govt, in any case. The development process to get reliable & responsible private parties is essential for various transport & related services as also to actually operate the services, provided social goals are met in harmony & with at least the same degree of efficiency as public operators - sadly, this has not been the case in India so far, but things might change with the likes of Indore & Punjab taking some bold steps toward this.

The cities that are being covered are smaller & never had public transport before. Therefore, this initiative must be commended. I think we also need to closely watch how it progresses, as Srivathsa has cautioned.

Further, the high networth criteria, I think is acceptable as the quality of transport operators has been pathetic. This is an invitation to the bigger players to bite & take the plunge into public transportation. The chances of seeing some good evolving here might be better.

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Yajamaanre' - I'll complete the list for you:

b. Coverage - they will run various kinds of services, covering every nook & cranny, unlike in the case of BMTC, where the driver/ conductor mafia decides which are 'profitable' routes.

c. Destination boards in English, apart from Kannada - Here again the politicians in-charge of BMTC have to pander to the language chauvinists, whereas the private operators have no such compulsions.

d. Route rationalisation - bringing down the current number of routes from the present 2000 odd to some manageable number, making it easy for commuters to comprehend the system at one single glance of a route map.

e. Three shift operations, even if the third shift is skeletal.

f. Yi service.

g. Courteous behaviour even towards non-Kannada speaking passengers.

saakaa???

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@Doc ASJ - Perhaps you thought the following part of the exchange between Yajamaanru and me (appended in italics below) was ascribed to BEST. No - that was ascribed to the regular government-run bus services, including BMTC, but not BEST.

SY: Is this just poor design or is it because it is a govt run orgn?  You make it sound like this is a given!!!
Me: It is poor design, and because it is owned by government, it can't bother to change, whether it serves any purpose or not.

My positioning the texts may have conveyed the wrong impression - my apologies for that. But, the rest is a plain statement of facts, and I expect nobody can take exception to that.

I myself have expressed great admiration for BEST - about how they have managed to provide such an efficient bus service, and even more for the efficient power supply service to a demanding clentele, like in Mumbai, even with all the constraints (related to a governmental set up) they are working under.

In the case of power, even as BEST runs up deficits of Rs 221 cr a year, with Reliance supplying, equally or more reliably, at the same tariffs as fixed by MERC, while making fair profits, in adjoining Central and North Mumbai, it is inevitable that the Maharashtra government will be compelled to hand over the area covered by BEST also to one of the many reputed competitors (to Reliance), soon.

In the case of bus services, in the face of mounting losses, is subsidy going to be the only option to meet the increasing demand, apart from other future challenges? Sorry, I don't think so. And, if BEST cannot come up with viable solutions to its financial problems, and BMTC, its service related problems, and in the immediate future, my submission is that we will have to look at other options, involving the private sector. The cities and citizens cannot wait till kingdom come for these government agencies to get their act together. Anyway, Delhi, Punjab, Indore, UP, etc, are seriously moving along those lines.

There's nothing too sacrosanct about bus services that they should remain with the government. We, the so-called thought leaders should have been providing the lead. Unfortunately, we are just waiting and watching, I don't know for how long more, even as the traffic scenario in the city is fast approching the break-down point.    

And, for the Nth time, when you repeat the same question - Finally, is there real interest by the Tata or TVS or Leylands - - - -  , my answer remains as at here

@ Vasanth - probably then we can discuss this with BMTC; Ho-Ho was an utter flop with only driver and conductor riding an expensive Volvo bus.

I was the Co-Chairman of an official BMTC task force once. We made so maby recommendations; very little of it was implemented. Before this, there were any number of similar task forces and Committees, both official as well as non-official, and with all that, BMTC's progress has been far below the demand on it. The present efforts of Dr Ashwin Mahesh's team, backed by ABIDe, are indeed laudable. But, clearly, he is facing an uphill task, and only because of the status-quoists within, proof of which was the scuttling of the Ho-Ho services - check this

@Sreevatsava - my good friend - thanks for the valiant effort at trying to rescue me. Your statement - I PoV is that the rationalisation of routes should start in 2011/2012 when we have the Metro Phase 1 complete and end in 2014/15 when Metro phase 2 will be complete.

Now, my dear friend, the biggest advantage of the simple bus system (without the restrictions imposed by the BRT model) is its flexibility, which needs to be dynamic, if necessary even on day-to-day basis, or even hour-to-hour. The plans for today have to be made today, and put in place today. And, as and when the METRO progresses, the changes have to put in place simultaneously.

On Yi - Though many people have talked of providing such services, in my understanding, Delhi's TRAKO (which has come over 3 years later) appears to be the only one that compares with it. I have interacted with London Bus officials through my e-mail. And, it doesn't look like they have this in place yet - open to correction. About other places, I haven't checked.

BMTC's (rather its vendors') problem with having costly display boards at the bus stops, as per the present proposal, is vandalisation - nobody is too comfortable about that.

And, finally, if you have to go by Social considerations, there are many other areas to be covered too - healthcare, education (primary, secondary, higher), water supply, power supply, etc, all of which the governments are indeed handling, but making a general mess of. Perhaps, you would also services like telecom, airlines, banking, insurance, courier, etc also to revert to government monopolies, like in the good old days?
 

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