The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) on Friday celebrated the first anniversary of its Bus Day with BMTC managing director Syed Zameer Pasha flagging off BMTC buses on five routes from Koramangala, Indiranagar, Domlur, Banashankari, and Rajajinagar to Outer Ring Road (ORR).
The routes were the BMTC’s way of thanking the ORR companies which have been instrumental in conceiving and nurturing the idea of Bus Day.
“Five buses with 200 people will be an inspiration for more people to opt for buses in the future. We have also considered the suggestion of having a Bus Week, and we will try to work out the logistics and many other things related to infrastructure to ensure that people trust us for better transportation,” said Pasha.
To motivate Bangaloreans to commute via buses, BMTC has been religiously observing the Bus Day on the fourth of every month.
It all started when Praja —an Internet-based blog service — started an online forum for the public to discuss their concerns and also voice out their opinions and suggestions to make bus services better.
Praja took the government officials, academia and transportation experts on board to discuss the plausibility of encouraging people to take public transport for a day, which would, as a result, motivate them take buses everyday.
“People of the city have an indifference and negativity towards the system, so we had to make them feel good about the public transport — BMTC. We wanted to make them feel good about taking a BMTC bus and also create a social impact where they feel they are doing their bit for the environment in reducing pollution,” said SV Jenny Pinto, member of Praja.
“BMTC helped in identifying corridors where many buses could be operated at higher frequency, mostly in the IT hubs in the city. The workforce in IT sector are usually FM radio fans, so we partnered with a radio channel that highlighted the need to use public transport. We also hosted interesting competitions to motivate people to take the bus,” said Pinto.
Praja was supported by the Outer Ring Roads Companies Association (ORRCA) for making the idea work. ORRCA is mainly formed out of companies in the tech hub of Ecospace and hundreds of techies, who generally either opted for their office cabs or their private vehicles.
“I have been using the BMTC since I was a child and I am a fan of their services. When this idea occurred to me, I thought this was my chance to do something for my city to help people have safer and better transportation,” said Seetharam Vishwanath, general secretary of ORRCA.
“We keep our ORRCA members in the loop before each bus day and shoot mails to remind them to take a bus on this day. Gradually, people have started taking buses every other day,” said Vishwanath.
“When this idea was conceived by Praja, we knew that this is an opportunity to aggressively campaign for public transportation,” said Pasha.
When the day became popular among people, BMTC got Karnataka State Pollution Control Board into the programme and asked them to keep a tab on pollution levels, as it was expected that with more people opting for buses, the pollution levels are bound to go down.
“I have worked for this cause since December 2009 and finally I got BMTC service on ORR for all these companies. This was indeed a gift for all of us on the Outer Ring Road and a pleasure to be a part of the first anniversary of BMTC’s Bus Day,” said Vishwanath.
