After having expanded its fleet by adding over 1,000 buses and scrapped around 500 during 2013-14, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) has drawn up plans to consolidate operations by rationalising trips and routes during this year.
There are enough buses on the roads and what is required is to streamline operations, said BMTC Managing Director Anjum Parvez.
BMTC is concerned about many buses running empty on a few routes and intends to optimise the utilisation of the fleet.
Ascertain timeMr. Parvez told The Hindu that the BMTC intends to use the Intelligent Transport System (ITS), being implemented at a cost of Rs. 69 crore, to streamline operations.
ITS would help BMTC know the number of passengers carried on a particular route and the buses required for passenger load at different points of time. ITS would also help ascertain the time taken for each trip at different intervals of time.
Address problemsThis could help in rationalising trip timings and address the problems faced by the crew, who said they were hard pressed to complete trips, the timings of which were fixed when traffic volume on roads were not as high as at present.
At the same time, crew skipping certain trips, deviating from designated routes, not stopping at designated halts etc., could also be ascertained. Some of the crew have the habit of plying buses on high revenue-earning routes instead of designated routes to earn incentive on revenue collection. This also could be checked through ITS, Mr. Parvez said.
However, only a few buses on routes that have high density of buses would be withdrawn, Mr. Parvez said.
Crew managementAs for the reported harassment of drivers and conductors by line checking staff and depot officials, Mr. Parvez said the recently introduced computerised leave management system at depots has been a success. Similarly, the corporation has decided to put up the duty rota for the crew on the 26th day of the month from the next month.
This could end complaints of harassment/ corruption in deploying crew on a particular route, he said.
The corporation is not keen on frequent change of routes of crew as that would put them through inconvenience, Mr. Parvez said.
