To make up for what the BEST has failed, an Indian Institute of Management (IIM) passout has designed a new bus service, ‘r-Bus.’ This bus pooling service offers you a comfortable public commute in point-to-point buses that pick you from your home in the morning and drop you to your office and back.
Also, making this a kind of a personal public transport system,air-conditioned buses are on the anvil for motorists who prefer the cool comfort. The buses will be fitted with GPS-enabled technology so they can be racked down—this means you will be alerted with an SMS when the bus nears your pick-up location. It will also guarantee you a seat.
“It’s a simple plan. First, we gather the people’s commute details. When we find enough of them with similar pick-up spots and final destination, we start running buses between those points. If we find, say 200 people, we can run 10 twenty-seater buses on that route, which gives you ample flexibility in terms of timings. We wire up the buses with GPS and voila—your personal public transport system,” 37-year-old Siddarth Sharma, the brainchild behind the project said.
Transport expert with the Mumbai Environmental Social Network, Ashok Datar said this was an initiative worth following and helping to crystallise. “I hope he gets critical mass. With BEST being a large and slow government organization, we can’t expect it to move in such an entrepreneurial way. Although it won’t be easy, we must support such initiatives. The state should facilitate such initiatives which don’t contradict public transport spirit,” he said.
Sharma said the buses will be hired from private contractors. “r-Bus will essentially find commuters with common routes. With data of who wants to travel where, we can coordinate with the private bus fleet operators and direct them to provide the buses as per requirements.” Payments will be aggregated as required and passed on to the bus providers. Technology to track the buses as they move, live ticketing technology and so on will also be provided. According to the IIM passout, they have about 170 sign-ups from across Mumbai which does not make it possible to arrange for buses for them. “I suspect we will need a few thousand sign-ups before we can find a route,” Sharma said.
r-Bus is a demand-driven network. Buses will be provided as and when demanded by commuters. “We have a minimum number (currently 100) of commuters that we need on a particular route,” he added.
