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How about a public transportation Index?

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silkboard - 5 April, 2010 | Bangalore | Praja | suggestion | Transportation | public transport | public transport | index

On the lines of this water index project, how about a separate group of people come forward to build a public transportation index for Bengaluru? Idea would be to build a single number, publish it month over month or quarter over quarter to show some trends on how public transportation related investments or policy changes are working for our city.

It is tempting to try a traffic and transportation index instead. But public transport is the bigger and better defined service that citizens want to consume. Traffic is a different beast, it caters to movement of goods and private as well as public means of mobility.

Unlike for water domain, transportation area may already have with lot of published data points. Further, thanks to a Wilbur Smith report for MoUD (Central Ministry of Urban Development), a lot of thinking too is available to borrow from.

Personally, I have my hands and feet into 2-3 different projects right now, or else would have offered to create and run a new project myself. Since public transport is by far the most popular topic of discussion here, I thought there may be good amount of interest in a project like this.

What work would this involve? Not a lot of running on the ground, but mostly data collection. May need a few RTIs as well. Data would come from usual suspects

  • BMTC
  • Metro Rail
  • Project status of Monorail, BARL (High Speed Rail)
  • KSPCB (for pollution data, should we want to associate air quality with public transport)
  • BBMP/BDA - their project status on pub trans related projects (BRT, Bus stands)
  • Think more.

Bit of hard work initially, but once into a rhythm, this may not even need regular RTIs. We could get data from all concerned agencies regularly once they clearly understand what we are looking for.

Roughly speaking, would need minimum 5-6 people for this project. Can have Remote people/NRIs, Housewives etc, as there will be some data collection and massaging work which is doable from home. May require meetings with agencies once in a while, so 2-3 project members should be local at Bengaluru.

What say?

COMMENTS

Wilbur Smith study annexure

Naveen - 7 April, 2010 - 03:52

Srivatsava - do you have a copy of the annexure ? If you need a copy, I can email it to you.

Great Idea

geodesic - 5 April, 2010 - 05:12

Count me in, silkboard. I'm local - based out of Bangalore ( atleast for the time being).

SB, You beat me into this!!

Srivatsava - 5 April, 2010 - 17:35

SB,

I attended the Water Index meet on saturday, only to figure out how we can re-use any concepts from there to a BMTC Bus travel index... There should be some synergies created in crowdsourced data, if any, between the indicies..

Btw, I have started measuring a fe w parameters of my bus travel - walking time (to and between bus stops), waiting time and travel time... I have my personal bus travel data for the 5 days I took BMTC in the evening in the month of March.

I was even looking to build an app into my phone to measure three  parts of the travel time - the time for which the bus is moving, stop time in bus stops, and stop time in jams and signals...

Yes, PT index will create a lot of interest... It needs a lot more thought and care to design one... Everyone in  this city is an expert enough to have a opinion on this topic.. Count me in... Lets create a project group..

And Yes... Its wonderful to track PT project status as part of the index.. We should get into the specifics separately..

Btw, do have a copy of the Wilbur Smith report offline? Its not available on the MoUD site anymore :(

Great Srivatsava

silkboard - 6 April, 2010 - 07:02

Okay, so we have an anchor for this possible project now. That is great!

I know the reports disappear from govt websites, so had saved that W-S report. It was only an exec summary though, will mail it in the evening.

Anyone else interested as well? I think this would be exciting, geeky, and will fit the profile of most members here (can spend lot more online time than on-ground). If we can build and publish a nice representative index, we could be pioneering something exciting here. Come, try, spark and make something big with your online friends !

Come on !

I was even looking to build

idontspam - 6 April, 2010 - 17:52

I was even looking to build an app into my phone to measure three  parts of the travel time - the time for which the bus is moving, stop time in bus stops, and stop time in jams and signals...

How are you building this app? Maybe there are some customizable data capture forms available. Dont know how appropriate or usable it may be, I was exploring some options with Shekar. 

Mailed you the Wilbur Smith report

silkboard - 6 April, 2010 - 18:47

Srivatsava - just emailed you the report. Its about 6 MB file, so a bit tough to upload here.

Have attached the executive summary to the post above.

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