Bangalore bus stops to have shopping malls

45 bus stands will be developed into shopping centres to ease congestion

BANGALORE: The bus terminals in Bangalore will have mini malls on the lines of the aerotropolis concept where malls are set up within terminals. In a first of its kind of initiative in India, 45 bus terminals called Transit Traffic Management Centres (TTMC) will come up in the IT capital of India in two years at an expense of Rs330 crore.

“The project was conceptualised 18 months ago and now we are finalising the tender bid which is likely to be completed with a few months. From the issue date, 24 months is the given time to complete all the 45 terminals in the city,” the chief civil engineer of Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) Palanetra Naik told DNA.

The TTMCs will have a bus stand on the ground floor, parking space either on the ground floor or the upper floors. The top most floors will have amenities such as food court, departmental stores, book stores, gift and fancy stores, crèche for children apart from the basic amenities like drinking water, public health care, cyber café and telephone facility. There would also be counters for air, road and train reservation, courier service desk, tourism and taxi service, flight check-in desk for domestic airlines, post office, electricity, water and telephone bill payment, rest rooms, counter for submission of income tax returns and payment of excise and commercial tax returns.

“A TTMC will be a one-stop stand for a passenger. He need not scout around for counters at different places. He can even park his vehicle and take a bus ride to the work place,” Naik says. The state-of-the-art bus terminals will also have multi-level two and four wheeler parking place and a police outpost for security and safety of the passengers.

The idea behind the new stands is to ease the traffic congestion in Bangalore. Bangalore city, having an area of 800 square kilometres has over 30 lakh vehicles. An average Banglorean spends more than 250 hours in a traffic jam every year on roads and travels at a speed of 12 kilometres per hour.

k_bhargavi@dnaindia.net