Prajagale,

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

 Syed

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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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Vasanth,

Thanks for summarizing in a very orderly manner. You did very good job of categorizing our concerns. Could you pls help us with making a comprehensive list? Also pls list all the questions that are posted here under each category you have listed.

Syed

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5. Something on bus stops.  How many there are?  What norms do they have for bus stops?  What is the min-max distance between 2 bus stops? 

6. Driver/conductor training - details of trainings conducted on safe driving, basic customer service (being polite to passengers, etc).

We might want to take the areas we live in and ask some specific questions around that.  E.g. Jayanagar - not a single bus covers 11th Main Jayanagar - all of them come on 9th Main.  No buses on East End Road.  Hardly any buses go from Banashankari side onto Bannerghatta Road (entering Jayadeva) then to MICO and then to Shivajinagar.  All take the 4th Block/Ashoka pillar. 

Srivathsa

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Vasanth,

Pls add the following to your list.

#5. BMTC's contract service to MICO, IT & many other industries, rallies etc.

Questions under this section:

• How many buses are being used for the private company transport?
• Are these buses are from additional pool than the regular schedule fleet?
• What is the quantum and percentage of revenues they earn from these services?
• How has percentage of buses deployed for company transport changed over the years (this should give an indication if they are reducing buses for public transport)?
• How many regular schedule routes are affected by the private contract service?

Syed

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I feel that we urgently need a POC t of TTMC with atleast one and with mini buses working as local routing shuttles. It would be nice if we could have directly communicated to our Transport Minister Mr. R Ashok. We still couldn't get an opportunity to meet him from Praja.

I think the MCTC bus station on the Mysore Road / Shanthinagar Bus Stand / Shivajinagar bus stand are one of the possible candidates. Shanthinagar would be ideal since most of BMTC officials stay near that and can monitor. They should start with local shuttles within Shanthinagar, Wilson Garden  etc. 

I replied back to Grahak BMTC Shakthi that there is a group of people (citizens/prajas) behind me, together we can brainstorm and give suggestions. Awaiting reply from BMTC to my mail.

I will summarize together the points put by everyone by next Wednesday. Our members can post until then. Let us start something on Jan 1st.

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Sun_moon avare'

Very relevant question. In fact, of the 1800 odd routes, I expect, almost 1000 would have just one trip a day, possibly catering to the local Corporator's daughter's school/ college commute needs.

My additional questions for the RTI list would be
1) Is there a mandate that the destination boards should be in Kannada only? If so, who has issued it?
2) Why are the destination boards displayed at the base of the front wind-screen (on almost 90% of the buses), and not in the designated space supposedly provided for it?

Muralidhar Rao

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Murali Sir, Help us with the questions that would lay bare the BMTC management and its operating philosophies. Adakke swalpa skkata ka iruda Prashne anna suggest madi. Syed

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Mr R Vasanth
 

I have gone through several suggestions, views and your interest, confidence in BMTC. I would like to suggest your name for cooption to the BMTC-Commuter Advisory & facilitation committee. You can visit www.bmtcinfo.com and view the objectives, constitution etc. If you are interested in contributing from the `ring side' and interacting with officials, you may send us a brief bio(profile) and we shall then get back to you after a decision.

Looking forward to your response.

With warm regards

Somasekhar V.K                                                                                                                                                                                                Managing Trustee: Grahak Shakti,                                                                                                                                                                           Co-Chairperson: BMTC Commuter Advisory & facilitation Committee,                                                                                                            Member: Commuter Comfort Task Force

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Hi Vasanth

Did the 'BMTC-Commuter Advisory & facilitation committee' member get in touch with you after seeing the postings on PRAJA? Either way, you should perhaps request him to use PRAJA as his Committee's interaction platform with the public (even if only the comp-savvy lot). PRAJA members have already given a whole lot of suggestions. He could perhaps start by giving BMTC's responses to each of them.

This way, each of us gets on to the Committee (even if indirectly), thereby broadening the scope of the discussions.  

Muralidhar Rao

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Vasanth,

 Few weeks back there was one action item that you had taken up to compile a list of information items that we would request from BMTC via RTI application(s). Could you pls expedite it?

 Syed

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