In Bangalore, many BMTC routes run very crowded even without space to standing and few routes run empty with lots of buses. BMTC should make life easier for these crowded passengers by providing more buses.

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 SB,

 Did you mean 2 trips = A to B and Return only or 2 runs of A to B and return?

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Its only a recommendation. Govt'd be better advised in due time I am sure that BMTC's bus to route ratios, and utilization of carrying capacity may not be fully optimized yet.

But I was doing some simple math which turned interesting. 5700 BMTC buses = 5700 * 50 = 2.85L seats. Make it 2.5 L for simplicity and comfort sake. Assume that each bus puts in 2 trips during peak commute hours (7 - 10). So, if they all go 100% full, buses will be carrying 5 lakh commuters. further, assume that  working population of Bangalore is 20% of population of 70 lakh = 14 lakhs.

With all the above assumptions, at full cpacity, BMTC would take about 33% of the commuter load (5 lakh of 14 lakh).

Now, head to CTTP 2007. It had the statistic that BMTC's share in intra-city transport is 32%. Sort of fits, and tells you that BMTC is loaded to capacity right now!

If BMTC's stated goal is to carry 50% of commuters in next two years, then what capacity does it need to have ready?

Assume BLR population in 2011 = 80L. 20% working pop = 16 lakhs. 50% of these = 8 lakhs. Ideally, you don't want all buses to be packed at peak hours, assume average 80% load factor per trip. More or less, you come to a number which will be double of their carrying capacity today (estimated to be 5 lakh).

Oh yes, the maths above is too simplistic. But since it did fit with CTTP's stat, I feel a little more comfortable posting it.

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There are reports that under a plan to promote greener public transport, center (ie MoUD) is funding purchase of 'green' buses for cities. There are riders of mandatory reforms, but the talk is of Bangalore getting 700 buses for Rs 235 crore.

Not sure if Abide was talking about the same thing. In these days of hectic credit-taking, you never know if same news leads to several people raising I-did-it hands.

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hi, I would like to raise one point during this discussion. 1. Is the existing BMTC service optimized one?. Expansion with optimizion can only sustain a good healthy growth. Has the ABIDE/BMTC thought of this? 2. At present i see there are lot of bus terminals. In some cases terminals are just close to 1 stop. Like, for example -- NR colony and tyagarajanagar , vijanagr and maruthi bandae ....etc. 3. Having more terminals directly affects proper planning of timing of buses. As, a result the succeding stops will see a surge of buses at one moment and in next moment a very mearge buses. This annoys us ( the commuters) very much. 4. I would suggest to keep the terminals as minimum as poosible. Would say 10 ( 8 around the city, 2 in centre). 5. Now that the bangalore has grown up, i would suggest there should be some MINI-ROUTES which goes deeper from the main road. Its like a feeder service. Even mini-buses can do this task. The idea is to make sure commuter DOESN'T TAKE HIS VECHILE out. He simply has to walk ( < 300m ), get these buses, go to the main road, and from there continue his journey. 6. with the above two suggestion at start, i'm sure, BMTC can bail out of lot of redendunt terminals, can improve their time planning and so availabilty of buses ON THE ROAD will be more and in more UNIFORM. Any future request of buses, BMTC can decide accordingly by considering these two factors. thanks, srinath

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SB,

Need to add standing to your calculations.  Even in Singapore standing norm is 30-32 (and sometimes the buses are really packed).  Then people get on and off.  I would assume that turnover is somewhere in the 1.25 range.  So your bus has a static capacity of somewhere in the 80 range and a dynamic capacity of about 100.  

BMTC needs to relook at its no double-decker policy.  We used to have so many routes with double deckers some years in Bangalore - 131, 150, 39, 32, 7, 12 and even 315 for sometime had DDs.  DDs had 50% more capacity with no additional road space.   Bombay still has so many of these.

Trailer buses are also a good idea.  They occupy a bit more road space, but do not increase entropy as an additional bus would. 

The big breakthrough will be NM +BMTC. 

Srivathsa

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Express buzz has this story - 'Money, but no buses'

Two interesting things in that story.

1) Talks about a JNNuRM 'deadline' for BMTC to buy 1000 buses by June 30. Which on is this? Had never heard of an arbitrary thing like this. Even if there was such a 'deadline', why was it not being tracked earlier, why is BMTC mentioning this only now. I bet there is more to this deadline.

2) Finally, we have some definitions for "low floor" and "semi low floor" buses. From this story

• the acceptable height of the bus floor under the JNNURM guidelines is upto 900 mm.
  
• However, at least 20 per cent of buses have to be low-floor (floor height 385-400 mm).
  
• Rest could be semi-low floor (650-850 mm) and Normal (900 mm) buses.

I was told that the new Big10 buses (Ashok Leylands) are "semi low floor", but the climb is not that much lesser than Normal buses.

Back to the story, it basically talks about lack of manufacturing capacity at Tata and Ashok Leyland. In these days of slow down, I find it hard to buy that the bus makers would not take up on this "huge" demand here.

Something does not fit.

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SB,

I read an article in Business India some time ago that bus production was low & could not meet demands over the next few years. That same article also mentioned that Volvo was planning to ramp up it's manufacturing capacity to almost double of what it is & that Tatas were also overstretched, trying to meet demands for buses from various cities.

The Vayu Vajras are low floor - the body actually "drops" down at stops & then "rises up" again before departing from a stop & these motions are manually controlled by the driver. Has anyone else noticed this ?

The Big-10s are also built on truck chassis, I think. They look no different than other BMTC buses.

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the body actually "drops" down at stops & then "rises up" again before departing from a stop & these motions are manually controlled by the driver. Has anyone else noticed this ?

This is called kneeling and is part of standard equipment of low floor buses in most countries. It is done to make the floor of the bus level to the sidewalk floor so wheelchairs, stroller, old people and kids can get on and off easily.

It will be useful only when the sidewalk height matches the kneeled bus clearance. Knowing how far away from the sidealk the BMTC bus stops and knowing how high BBMP builds the sidewalk I am actually surprised the driver is even trying to use this feature.

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