Gujarat bowled over by BMTC's performance

Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) buses may not be the preferred mode of transport for many City dwellers but outside home, BMTC is seen as an example which other states want to emulate. No wonder that the state of Gujarat has hailed it as one of the best examples of how an urban public transport should be.

And not only has the BMTC won itself a lot of appreciation for ferrying lakhs of people daily from one corner to another in the City, but the Gujarat transport department also wants BMTC officials to visit their state and teach them a thing or two on how to upgrade their public transport. Incidently, top rung officials of the BMTC even visited Gujarat, recently.

As a matter of fact, BMTC buses ferry 45 per cent of the total travelling population, i.e. 49 lakh people, on a daily basis even though the 6,700 BMTC buses constitute only 0.16 per cent of the total vehicle population on the roads, says C G Anand, General Manager (Technical), BMTC, who was among the officials who visited Ahmedabad.

According to the statistics, four wheelers comprise 30 per cent of the total traffic volume on the road while the two and three wheelers comprise a whopping 65 per cent.

In the City alone, two wheelers ferry almost 25 lakh people. However, despite the overwhelming numbers, there is a need to encourage more and more people to use the public transport.

“The officials in Gujarat are surprised that such a large number of the population travels on BMTC buses and are curious to know how we manage to attract such a large crowd everyday,” said Anand.

BMTC Managing Director Anjum Parwez told Deccan Herald: “Earlier, we had a delegation from Ahmedabad who had come to study our financial model and how the BMTC runs its buses without any government support. Recently, I along with other BMTC officers also visited Ahmedabad to study their BRTS (Bus Rapid Transport System) services which we plan to start in some parts of Bangalore and other places in Karnataka. So both the states are studying and imbibing each other's city transport model for which there are many interactions going on between the two corporations”.

Currently, BMTC earns an average daily revenue of Rs 4.93 crore, covering 13.21 lakh km in 83,738 trips overall.