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Satellite Bus Stands - Will they reduce traffic?

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Vasanth - 12 October, 2008 | Bangalore | Bus | Bus Stops | KSRTC | Citizen Reports | Transportation | public transport | Transit Centers | Satellite Stations

Most of the traffic planners say to start the satellite bus stands to reduce the city traffic. Recently KSRTC Minister Mr.Ashok announced many satellite bus stands and even in Mysore where the traffic is quite normal in the range of 300+ crores. Will they really serve the purpose?

I would say that Satellite bus stands are really helpful when most of the buses become empty at the entrance of the city. If the buses run full till the Central Bus Stand, it should be continued that way. Why?

If the buses are running full, it means that most of the passengers are traveling to central business district and traveling further. Only very few as I have observed, on an average say 5% of the people get down on the way to central bus stand. If this bus ends at the satellite bus stand, few will take autos and few city buses. This will lead to increased number of autos plus satellite bus stand service buses. Many of the intercity travelers will be carrying luggage and hence prefer autos. This will increase the cost to the passenger and at the same time increase the auto traffic.

This works out if 50% of the passengers get down at city entrance and only 50% or less travel to the central bus stand. Then, people of 2 buses can be clubbed together into a single bus and transferred to central bus stand. People will still have the reluctance to change the buses to reach the central bus stand.

This can clearly be seen with Bangalore satellite bus stand at Byatarayanapura. KSRTC is marketing its premier services by creating inconvenience to non-premier bus service by starting them from Satellite bus stand. If at all to reduce the traffic, KSRTC had to start all the buses from Satellite bus stand. But it is not doing so, premiere and Express services start from Majestic and only common man's nonstop services start from satellite bus stand. Also, people traveling from Mysore to Bangalore mostly travel towards Majestic and do not end their journey before satellite bus stand.

Well, instead of satellite bus stands with hitech malls, restaurants and lounges, why don't they invest in more city buses. At the cost of 200+ crores for satellite bus stand, at the cost of around 10 lakhs per bus, we get nearly 2000 buses. Cities like Mysore have hardly got less than 1,000 buses. Instead of investment in the satellite bus stand, this can improve the city bus service.

COMMENTS

Small step

SB_YPR - 26 February, 2009 - 04:45

Hi,

Satellite bus stands for KSRTC are a small step in decongesting the CBD. For them to be fully effective, a comprehensive strategy of traffic management has to be worked out.


1. All private buses should also be terminated near these satellite stands. At present, there is one KSRTC satellite BS functioning on Mysore Road and three others are either under construction or proposed : Peenya, Byappanahalli, New Airport Road (near trumpet). GoK should provide some land next to the KSRTC BS sites to the private operators association to develop private bus stands there.
2. All satellite BS should be well connected to each other and to other parts of the city by BMTC and Metro. The BMTC routes should avoid CBD and use the ORR/IRR/Chord road etc.
3. Traffic congestion at these satellite BS should be eliminated by constructing exclusive entry/exit ramps for buses, from the main road.
4. KSRTC, other SRTC and private buses should not be allowed to enter or approach CBD at all. Even the buses from Mysore Road BS towards Hosur etc. should use Mysore Road-NICE Road-EC route and not KR Market-Lalbagh-SB route.
Only then will the purpose of decongesting the CBD be truly achieved.
Regards,
~~~~
Manish, Nagarbhavi.

Sure.. it avoids road rash in CBD area and distributes alighting

Vasanthkumar Mysoremath - 11 June, 2009 - 05:01

Thampan Sir,

As Vasanth and Manish have pointed out, such satellite bus stands will definitely help in reducing road rash in CBD area - the only thing that has to be done by BMTC is - from CBD - arrange regular mini buses of Atal variety so that number of large empty buses moving along CBD roads/occupying more than 60 feet of road length can be drastically reduced.  But some large buses will have to be allowed into CBD area because those carrying heavy luggage may find it easy to reach the Railway Station or to go to Airport etc.

- There is lot of 'cross-city travelling through CBDs' - Majestic, Shivaji Nagar, City Market  by people going to work places, students to schools etc., 'even though they have nothing to do with CBD'.  Such people can use fast moving Atal buses on the outer ring roads since time taken to reach their destinations will be much faster than moving through the CBD riddled with chaos. 

- Vasanth Mysoremath 

Increase the convenience

abidpqa - 11 June, 2009 - 14:18

The reason for many people go to the central busstands are to get connecting buses or trains.

  1. There should be more buses like 201, which run between depots, and there should be buses connecting satellite bustands. These buses should run on time also. People should not feel it is better to go to main bus stands like Shivajinagar than wait for buses that run between depots.
  2. The trains should have more stops in the outskirts. The Railways, I think, say that there can be only one stop in a city.  They refuse to stop in places like Whitefield, Banswadi, Hebbal etc. which would be very convenient for the longdistance travellers and will reduce their travelling after they reach Bangalore.

dear vasanth sir

thampan - 11 June, 2009 - 20:27

there was a comment by Joe Anne which looked like spam to me and I had commented here  regarding that. Unfortunately the spam got removed but my comment regarding the spam remained :) 

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