Route Search is available on BMTC Website

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Written By kbsyed61 - 4 April, 2010

Bangalore BMTC Route Bus Transportation public transport Bus Search

Happened to visit the BMTC website to check if anything has changed. Got a surprise to find that its link for 'Route Search' is active and it did allows route search.

Searched few routes and seems to the results presented were correct and useful. here is the link for BMTC route Search

http://www.yulopindia.com/bmtc//index.php/bus/redirect_to_route_search

Vinod,s8, srivatsava, manish, could you all pls check this out and report if this feature reports the correct routes and people can rely on the results for planning their travel in Bengaluru.

Syed

COMMENTS


 First, route search is enabled only for high-end services, which was available as static earlier. 

Second, link on "Complete Map" gives wrong map. Example: I searched from Majestic(KBS) to Koramangala Canara Bank(IIPM). Then clicked on "Complete Map" It shows wrong map(Shows Vidyaranyapura????). I have not tested anything else.

There is only

ss87 - 4 April, 2010 - 09:49

There is only volvo,vajra,big-10 and BIAS services provided. What about the various other services of BMTC. And BIAS routes havent included BIAS-1,G route does not have B-2,No mention of C and K services running in the city.

For various Feeder and Metro services running(As per my knowledge) I have created a page at Wikipedia. I am not sure of the timings and hence havent mentioned them. You can refer to the link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeder_and_Metro_BMTC_Routes

And for the direction based services following is the link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direction_based_BMTC_routes

the information provided is accurate as per my knowledge. If people find any changes or errors kindly correct the same.

 

 

Its a POC level system!!

Srivatsava - 4 April, 2010 - 06:24

Its a good beginning. For starters, the Vajra, Vayu Vajra and Big10 routes have been fed in. Thats probably not even 5% of the routes and about 10% of the schedules (buses). I would call it a Proof-of-Concept stage application.

I do not believe that digitizing the remining routes is the hard part. Its more important thing is to get the application right. Once, that happens, we need to feed data for more routes and it will work just fine.

Problems in the application

Over the years, we have a huge number of aliases built into the transportation vocabulary. These aliases (alternate names) are not being handled by the application, as yet. Concequently, when I performed a route search for 'Avalahalli' to "Dairy Circle' (which is my daily route) and another from 'BEL Circle to Electronics City', I found these anomalies regarding the results

  • From the existing data, there is only one way/route I can travel from Avalahalli to Dairy Circle - thats via KBS.  So, I should see only one route/entry in the result set. But i get over 8 results.
  • The first two results are repetitive. First via KBS (majestic) and  the second via Kempegowda Bus Station!!!  KBS, Majestic and Kempegowda Bus Station are shown as through they are separate locations - Problem with aliases for bus stop names.
  • The other 6 results are useless, and its the same result repeating 6 times. They all read "Avalahalli => => Bangalore Dairy Circle (Christ College) @ Total distance= 0 Km". As a user, I wouldnt like to see such 'travel options' given to me!!
  • This application is capable of merging only two bus routes.  It shows either a direct route route or  single-change route!! I take three buses to come from office to home daily. This option will not be shown by this application.
  • This application is a 'route serach' and not a travel planner. It doesnt give the frequency of buses on a particular route. For example from KBS to Dairy Circle, 5 routes are listed (V360B   V356P   V356N   V356M   V356C  ), but their collective/individual frequency is not given. I wont take take the route if its frequency is over 30 mins.
  • If a direct bus is available, the application just doesnt show any other options for changing bus!! If chnaging bus can mean 5-6 times higher frequency, why wouldnt I change?
  • Aliases in Route Numbers - There is V10 (run on a Volvo), P10 (Pushpak) and 10 (run on both MarcoPolo A/C and the old 'dabba' bus). All these are the same route 10, run on different grade of buses. These route aliases arent listed in the application.

I will give this application a 3/5 rating considering this is 'beta' app. If this was final, I would have given this a '1/5' rating... This is just for the application, irrespective of whether the route data is fed or not.

I dont understand why BMTC is struggling to build its own Route Search system. Google transit is available to them for free. Why should BMTC even bother to 'waste' its resources on building the system. There is a good amount of route info digitized and we can start trials of Google Transit based on this 'existing' data.

I think BMTC has to be educated on how to leverage existing tools!!

Bus Stop Codes

Bheema.Upadhyaya - 4 April, 2010 - 07:27

If each bus stop has codes internally then whatever aliases comes system should be able to handle. I presume they handle with codes, else this type of issues keep coming. 

@Srivatsava: I agree strongly. Just integrate with Google. Use crowdsourcing, in case BMTC has less resources. Many people will help BMTC, if they open up some portal to update/create public data for them.


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