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Monday, March 31, 2008

veritable death-traps

text of the letter sent to TOI:

I refer to the report about the car crash in Krishnagiri (on the Bangalore-Chennai express-way) resulting in the death of two young men, and serious injuries to a young lady, published in your columns on the 29th, under the caption 'car did 90 km in one hour'.

The whole idea of building 'tolled' express-ways is to enable fast travel, and, with modern cars matching up in performance, 90 kmph speed is passe'. Now, out of the toll amounts collected, apart from keeping the roads in good repair, one would have expected that the contractors are required to carry out rigorous patrolling to ensure that traffic violations (by a local bus), of the kind that led to the accident, do not happen. Very clearly, that's not quite the case, turning these express-ways into veritable death-traps. The bereaved relatives will be doing a great service to the public by lodging hefty compensation claims in order that appropriate lessons are learnt for the future.

Also, no credible effort seems to have ever been put in by the State in educating the rural folk living along these road stretches, and using them for their daily chores, on even basic safety aspects.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

dependability of BMTC in question

text of the letter sent to the press:

Within the same week, there have been two instances of BMTC buses being involved in serious crashes, supposedly due to 'brake failure'. In one, the conductor died, even as many were injured, and quite seriously too, in both.

Now, with the kind of advanced technologies that go into vehicle design and manufacture these days, one hardly hears of such happenings elsewhere. Very clearly, therefore, these mishaps are resulting out of the poor maintenance practices followed by BMTC - doesn't quite inspire much confidence amongst the public, particularly when it is poised to take on the additional responsibility of providing critical connectivity to the new airport.

Ironically, also, even as these reports have appeared in the press, there is another about the conferment of a 'Citizen Extraordinaire' award by a Rotary Club on the MD. Admittedly, extra-ordinary efforts are required to make a monopoly government organisation accountable!

Monday, March 24, 2008

A critique on BRTS

The following is the full text of the comments under 'guest column' on page 2 of TOI today.

Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) when operated with high capacity buses gets to be called High Capacity Bus System (HCBS).

Curitiba in Brazil supposedly pioneered this model, following the 'success' of which quite a few other cities across the world have adopted it. In India, a team of technocrats from IIT, Delhi have been advocating this model from long, and as a result, the city of New Delhi has just about launched this scheme along one route, with a few more set to follow soon. The Delhi experiment has been receiving a lot of flak in the local media, which the supporters of the model would like to label as the propaganda by METRO/ MONO - rail, and automobile lobbies.

Now, whether BRTS or HCBS, both call for dedicated lanes in the centre of a given road. Allowing for 20 + 20 ft for the dedicated lanes on either side of a 10 ft wide median to accommodate the bus stops, it will leave just 50 ft for everything else on a 100 ft (between the outer edges of the drains on either side) road, like the one in Indiranagar. Thus, after providing for 20 ft lanes on either side for the general traffic, which by themselves are going to be terribly crammed, you will be left with a balance of 5 ft on either edges for drains, foot-paths, utility lines, etc. Plainly, that will mean the end of the majestic trees along this road.

The question further is how many roads do you have of this width in Bangalore?

Now, going by plain logic, supposing in any given route direction, BMTC is operating at a frequency of a bus every 3 minutes, and the buses are moving at an average speed of 10 kmph, there will be a gap of 500 M between any two buses. As such, if a lane is dedicated exclusively for the buses, it will then push out 100 other vehicles from this 500 M stretch (making for 200 vehicles per km), assuming an average vehicle length of 5M, and near bumper-to-bumper traffic conditions. This is total under utilisation of high demand city road space. If the cost of this much of land is factored into the project costing, particularly in cities like Bangalore, then the differential between the METRO-rail and the HCBS will narrow considerably.

The above apart, the access structures to the bus stops on the central median, can be fairly complicated and costly, particularly if you are following the Curitiba model. Also, while getting the traffic to move smoothly along straight road stretches is generally not a serious issue, the challenge is in getting them to negotiate the junctions smoothly. In this, the BRTS, for all its engineering, fails to provide satisfactory solutions.

There is a telling picture of a stretch of road in some city, which has adopted the model, showing an empty stretch of over 100M behind a bus on a dedicated lane, even as the adjoining lane (in the same direction) is totally cluttered with vehicles of all kinds, particularly two-wheelers. Very clearly, even with having introduced the HCBS on dedicated lanes, it has not caused citizens to switch from the use of their two-wheelers, leading to the problems aggravating even further.

Thus, while dedicated lanes may be OK on stretches leading to and from bus depots, or on stretches where the frequency is higher than say a bus every 15 seconds, on regular roads, they are totally ill-advised. Rather than dedicated lanes, total ban on private vehicles (meaning - vehicles other than buses, taxi's and auto's) on select stretches, during peak hours, would any day be preferable.

All these apart, BRT schemes are invariably envisaged as operations by Companies promoted by Municipalities, with 'artificial monopoly' (as different from natural monopoly situations, like in the case of power distribution) franchises being tendered out for different districts/ routes. In the case of the Indore city set up, for example (a presentation on which was made in Bangalore recently), the Company takes all decisions with regard to routes, fares, types of buses, schedules, etc, with hardly any discretion being left to the service providers. While the revenue generation out of cash sales comes straight into the hands of the individual operators, out of the earnings from sale of monthly passes (which are managed by the Company), a fixed sum of the order of Rs 22,000/- per bus per month is made over to them. If the targets are not achieved, which could very well happen considering the various kinds of forces at play, it will eventually lead to a subsidy regime.

Also, with far too many controls and restrictions still in place, I expect, TATA's, TVS's would still want to keep a safe distance, leaving the field to the local mafia chieftains to play ball with the Company authorities, more or less like the PWD operations in most states.

All in all, BRTS is not exactly a satisfactory model. In the case of Bangalore, the Bangalore Metropolitan Land Transport Authority (BMLTA) has been instituted. There is a proposal to strengthen and broad-base it. Once that is in done, what Bangalore needs to do is to facilitate the entry of players of the stature of TATA's and TVS's to provide the services in open competition with the BMTC, on a level playing field, with the minimum of restrictions. Public bus transport services today is too vital an infrastructure area not to have the competent services of such players.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

technology can help but to a limited extent

text of the letter sent to the New Indian Express:

I refer to the news report captioned 'wi-fi enabled bus to make smart travel a reality' published in your columns today (12th March, '08).

What does not seem to be appreciated by the public in general is the fact that however good and technologically advanced a bus may be, as long as its operation is in the hands of the government-owned monopoly BMTC, it can make a marginal impact if at all on the overall travel experience.

The BMTC has had on its fleet some 50 VOLVO buses, which are comparable to the best in the world, from over two years. But, even now, the utilisation of these, apart from the overall ridership they enjoy, is pretty dismal by any standard. A GPS-enabled service for tracking these buses through SMS, known as 'Yelli Iddira?', which helped improve ridership considerably, was abandoned unceremoniously after it had served the purpose of getting BMTC some publicity mileage, leaving the users who had come to depend on it totally in the lurch.

Very clearly, therefore, technology can do only so much. The real change can happen only with policy revisions enabling effective competition from organised private sector players. The attendant benefits that will accrue to the city as well as its citzens, in addition, will also be really huge.

BMTC's grandiose schemes

text of the letter sent to TOI:

I refer to the report in your columns today (12th March,'08) under the caption "Decongesting Bangalore - Research Institute for Transport Soon".

The very first policy recommendation that the Centre for Sustainable Transport and Urban Planning (CSTUP), proposed by BMTC alongwith allocating it a Rs 30 crore corpus, could be to open out the 'public bus transport services sector' to competition from organised private sector players on a level playing field. But, it is quite inconceivable that a body promoted by BMTC, an interested party, will ever do that. And consequently, while promoting such a Centre may not be such a bad idea, it is best left in the hands of either an IIM, or a reputed Architecture and Town Plannning school.

It could cost far lesser too. And, after all, we are talking about public money.