Shared transport: New mantra to ease traffic woes in City

“Hi, we have couple of seats available in shared Tempo Traveller running from Wakad, Aundh, Baner, Balewadi to Koregaon Park, Kalyani Nagar, Magarpatta City, Hadapsar.

Morning Timing - Around 8:15 AM Evening Timing - Around 6 PM Contribution - Based on number of commuters.’’  This is not an advertisement by a transport company. It has been posted on the internet by an employee of Indian IT major TCS, Pune.

This is just one of many such posts one can find on the Internet as companies are finding new ways to beat the traffic and improve efficiency of their employees. Under shared transport, companies operating out of one campus or campuses located on the same route use common transport facilities, instead of each company having their own fleet of cabs, buses or tempos.

The concept has caught the attention of IT companies on the Outer Ring Road in Bengaluru. Ram Narayanan, General Manager at eBay Product Development Center, India, told Deccan Herald that the Outer Ring Road Companies Association (ORRCA) is  exploring the possibility of a shared mass transport system to ease traffic jams to an extent.

The association has already encouraged carpooling among its employees with some success.  “We are potentially looking at shared transport system across companies so that each of us doesn’t run our own buses,” he said.

There are 2.5 lakh employees in various companies located on the ORR and another 1.5 lakh employees in Whitefield. Most of these companies have their own transport services for employees.

Citing huge traffic snarls on the ORR, Narayanan pointed out that they get stuck for over 45 minutes while coming out of their campus at RMZ Ecospace. The situation on the ring road is much worse, he said.

“Apparently, in Pune, there are experiments on this part where a third party agency runs a common bus service and companies subscribe to a number of seats. We have started to investigate whether that makes sense for us so that every company doesn’t go and have its own fleet. It will reduce the traffic to an extent,’’ he said.

Narayanan explained that they at ORRCA are trying to do things which are under their control.  “We are certainly willing to partner,” he said, pointing at how the ORRCA sponsored 50 traffic security guards to augment the police force on the ORR in December 2015.