Illegible route/destination boards on buses operated by the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) have been a long-standing issue with commuters.
With many buses sporting route boards that are not properly maintained or that cannot be read easily, bus travel becomes tougher, say commuters. But the BMTC is finally ready to address this problem.
With the implementation of the Intelligent Transport System (ITS) project in the public transport utility, several technological achievements have been introduced. These include LED boards showing routes and destinations at major bus stations, electronic ticketing machines and even smart cards, which will be operational soon. However there are several buses that are yet to get modern electronic route boards and currently sport small metal boards with painted route numbers.
“Forget the boards being bi-lingual, sometimes even the route number is not visible properly. There are so many buses parked here that finding the right bus in time and boarding it becomes very difficult if the route numbers and destinations are not displayed properly,” said Somanna, a vendor who travels from Kengeri to K.R. Market every day.
According to BMTC officials, approximately 3,669 buses have been updated with LED boards that flash the route number, destination and route in Kannada and English. However, this is only a little over half of the total fleet size of 6,404 buses.
“We are installing LED boards on buses which will be operational in the coming years and on all new buses. The buses which do not have these boards currently are set to be phased out in the coming years and that is why they have not been upgraded,” said Ekroop Caur, managing director, BMTC.
While this will result in BMTC not having to invest in buses destined for scrapping, commuters feel that the current boards could be spruced up a bit and displayed more prominently. “Let them at least repaint the route numbers and destinations to a size which can be easily read, and clean up the display area, this can be done easily,” said Manjunath S.K., who uses BMTC buses occasionally.
In figures
Ridership per day: 52 lakh
Total buses: 6,404
Buses with LED boards: 3,669
Schedules operated: 6,216
