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Hi syed, Probably we could explore why BMTC claims contract services to IT houses are more profitable than plying buses in prime routes which are to my knowledge more lucrative to BMTC?

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The complete list of bus destination routes with planned (nos / time per trip) vs actual trips per day (nos / av time per trip) on each route for any one month. Hypothesis - with the same bus fleet and a better route planning (direction rather than destination opriented) there could be more folks transported in a shorter commute / waiting time.

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sun_n_moon, I think most of us like that hypothesis. We should ask for things that help us prove that BMTC is losing money and hurting Bangalore by not going for a redo of its routing scheme. Some more questions to ask possibly on the same lines:

• Average trip length of BMTC routes.
• Average occupancy (load factor) per trip run. I bet they may not have a good numbe rhere, would be a prediction. But we could rephrase this to ask for routes with highes and lowest load factors.
• Average speed of BMTC buses during peak hours. If the response comes back as "too broad", narrow this down to average trip time for a few long distance routes that run on crowded corridors. Ex: 356C, 333P, 2, 500N, 335E
• Average amount of tickets purchased on long distance routes. Can specifically mention the routes here too. This would be to see how many people make "effective" use of long distance routes (use for short stretches vs go end to end)

Above could give us effective throughput of BMTC. Some more questions to understand the way they operate:

• Process of adding or approving new routes. Since this will be a broad question, let us narrow this as "last ten routes added, along with justification or reasons".
• Revenue from pure ticket sales vs Revenue from advertising vs Revenue from Real Estate lease operations
• Process followed for numbering new routes
• Last ten bus shelters moved or shifted by BMTC or BBMP, what were the grounds for moving them.
• Do BMTC buses service the city and cantonment railway stations?

Now, one criticism of BMTC that is unwarranted is their driver's behavior on the roads. I think that given the cricumstances and chaos on our roads, BMTC drivers do a better job than the yellow plate club and the rash drivers amongst us. I would like to ask for:

• Total amount paid by BMTC towards insurancing its buses
• Number of insurance claims filed by BMTC per month
• Bus to accident ratio.
• Route to accident ratio, and the route with most accidents.

Got to stop, am getting carried away now. BMTC should be readily giving most of these answers, we may not need an RTI. Rithesh, Syed - will speak with you offline to prepare a structured list of questions.

I wish some folks from Maharasthra/Mumbai could help this futher by asking these same questions to BEST. That will help us produce a nice stats based comparison of BEST vs BMTC.

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Well, let us start preparing a document what type of service we want from BMTC. There are so many  things we want, we will put it together point by point.

1. Last mile connectivity - Major hurdle for public transport. Use of BMTC branded autos / Swaraj Mazdas or the likes(shared/exclusive), TTMC construction ASAP with park and ride facility to enable personalized last mile connectivity.

2. Routing - We are all saying that routing is the problem for BMTC since it still operates with 3 hubs. We developed a model with Narayan developing beautiful pictures with different TTMCs connected with each other. We still have to put a concrete model on what type of routing are we looking for.

3. BRT Corridors - Most of the buses are struck in traffic and we regularly see accidents of buses hitting 2 wheelers and claiming life. To improve the transit speed as well as safety reason, we need BRT. We all know that BRT was ill conceived in Delhi, but the same won the elections for Congress. It is just the reluctance which has to be overcome by BMTC.

4. Passenger Information Systems : I posted yesterday about a website developed by IIT Mumbai the buses one has to change in order to reach point A to point B. Such pages needs to be put in www.bmtcinfo.com.

Also, live information on current location of buses to be displayed in www.bmtcinfo.com just like the dimits page that I posted yesterday. This clubbed with YI tracking on the cellphone should give us the location of the buses exactly.

Please add on points 5 onwards. We will make a point by point comprehensive document so that in future if we meet BMTC again, we are bang on instead each member expressing different views at the meeting.

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 Prajagale,

 It is time we take this action item forward. Can somebody consolidate the list of questions?

 Syed

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